Flourishing and the Global Flourishing Study

Flourishing and the Global Flourishing Study

Flourishing and the Global Flourishing Study (#22)

Tyler VanderWeele ¹ , Tmothy Lomas ¹

Harvard University, Boston, MA, United States

Many empirical studies throughout the social and biomedical sciences and many policy discussions focus only on very narrow outcomes such as income, or a single specific disease state, or measures of feeling happy. Human well-being or flourishing, however, consists in a much broader range of states and outcomes. Flourishing might be understood as the relative attainment a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good including, but not limited to, happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. The empirical literature from experimental, longitudinal, and quasi-experimental studies is reviewed in attempt to identify major determinants of, and resources for, human flourishing. A new major research and data collection undertaking – the Global Flourishing Study – will be described consisting of longitudinal data on over 200,000 individuals from 22 countries, representing about half of the world’s populations, with nationally representative samples and annual data collection. The study will hopefully dramatically advance our understanding of, and efforts to promote, human flourishing.

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Authors contributing to this presentation.

VanderWeele, T

Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality at Harvard University. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance, and biostatistics. His methodological research is focused on theory and methods for distinguishing between association and causation in the biomedical and social sciences and, more recently, on psychosocial measurement theory. His empirical research spans psychiatric and social epidemiology; the science of happiness and flourishing; and the study of religion and health. He is the recipient of the 2017 Presidents’ Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS). He has published over four hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals; is author of the books Explanation in Causal Inference (2015), Modern Epidemiology (2021), and Measuring Well-Being (2021); and he also writes a monthly blog posting on topics related to human flourishing for Psychology Today.

Lomas, T

Dr. Tim Lomas has been a lecturer in positive psychology at the University of East London since April 2013. Tim completed his PhD at the University of Westminster in 2012, where his thesis focused on the impact of meditation on men's mental health. Since 2013, Tim has published numerous papers and books on topics including positive psychology theory, mindfulness, Buddhism, linguistics, and gender. His work has been featured in articles in prominent publications including TIME, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and The Atlantic. His current main area of research involves creating a lexicography of untranslatable words relating to wellbeing (please visit www.drtimlomas.com/lexicography for the latest on the project). Two books on the project are out in 2018: an academic analysis of the lexicography, entitled Translating Happiness: A Cross-Cultural Lexicon of Wellbeing, published by The MIT Press; and a general interest exploration of key words, entitled The Happiness Dictionary: Words from Around the World to Help Us Lead a Richer Life, published by Piatkus.

Flourishing and the Global Flourishing Study (#22)

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