The Largest Happiness Study Ever Led to 3 Main Findings (so far)
From the Happiness PhD Project with Jackson Kerchis
The Global Flourishing Study (GFS) is a study of over 200,000 participants in 22 countries that will follow people across 5 years to assess numerous aspects of flourishing and its causes.
This is the largest scale study of its kind and — compared to surveys like The World Happiness Report — it is unique in that will track the same cohort for several years to look for factors that drive changes in flourishing over time.
The researchers have a model for what it means to flourish and found three interesting initial findings…
What is flourishing?
Flourishing is an expansive, multidimensional concept which they define as “the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good, including the contexts in which that person lives”.
It’s important to note that flourishing will vary across cultures and contexts. It represents both an ideal (e.g. what is the Good Life?) and the relative attainment of that ideal (e.g. to what extent am I living the Good Life?).
Six domains make up flourishing:
Health (physical wellbeing)
Happiness (emotional wellbeing)
Meaning (cognitive wellbeing)
Character (volitional wellbeing)
Relationships (social wellbeing)
Financial Security (material wellbeing)
Think of it this way: if you are healthy, happy, purposeful, virtuous, social, and financially secure you are probably living a very good life.
What are the findings so far?
You can read the full report on the first wave of data collection here.
The biggest takeaway is that flourishing is complex and varies across countries, within countries, and across demographics (like age). That said, consider these initial findings…
Young people seem to be less happy than ever before.
Increased economic development seems to erode meaning and relationships.
Religious or spiritual practice improves your quality of life.
Historically, happiness over the lifespan followed what researchers called a U-shape pattern.
Relatively speaking, young people were quite happy followed by a dip in mid-life then a rise again in old age. Across the world this pattern has shifted to a J or / shape. There are exceptions to this, for example, you may not want to retire to Poland or Tanzania as there happiness steadily decreases with age. In Spain the pattern is U shaped but with a steep drop at the beginning with 18-24 year olds reporting the lowest levels of flourishing.
But taken on the whole the left side of this U shape is falling across the globe: in other words young people are becoming the least happy. This aligns with the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt who has written extensively about this. He attributes this trend to the shift from a play-based childhood — rich in social relationships, autonomy, and engagement/interaction in the real world — to a phone-based childhood — poor social connection, lack of autonomy necessary to develop self-confidence, and primarily screen-based interaction.
There’s another interesting, yet concerning pattern in the research: economic development corresponds to lower levels of meaning and social connection.
“While many developed nations report comparatively higher levels of financial security and life evaluation, these same nations are not flourishing in other ways, often reporting lower meaning, pro-sociality and relationship quality… Other, often middle-income, nations, such as Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines report higher on these other more humanistic aspects of flourishing. The more material and the more humanistic forms of well-being sometimes diverge. While purely descriptive, the negative relationship between meaning and gross domestic product per capita is particularly striking and has been confirmed in previous work.”
In other words, standard of living is not the same thing as quality of life.
As developed nations become increasingly focused on values like consumption, productivity, and economic growth they may unknowingly sacrifice the more intangible goods that make life worth living: meaning, community, and relationships.
Finally, while there were many tentative connections and ideas coming out of this research, one thing stood out across countries and demographics: religious service attendance supports flourishing.
“[I]n both the demographic analyses and in the childhood predictor analyses, religious service attendance was one of the factors most consistently associated with present or subsequent well-being, across countries and across outcomes. This is consistent with much previous literature focused principally on the West, but now expanded to a broad range of countries.”
This datapoint is compelling enough to make it prescriptive. If you intend to maximize your happiness, you should participate in some religious or spiritual community of practice.
Now, importantly, I am not telling you which tradition or what community. If you grew mired in so called “Catholic Guilt” you don’t necessarily need to go back to the organized church. Nor do you need to go live with Zen monks for months at a time (like I did). The invitation is just to have some spiritual or religious community you engage with consistently. This is a proven pathway to wellbeing.
If you’re atheist or agnostic consider an interfaith group or secular congregation, a local meditation/mindfulness center, or maybe even starting a book club or an informal group centered around the spiritual dimension of life.
This research has highlighted the challenging circumstances facing young people, the need to reconsider progress as something more than just economic growth, and the importance of investing in spiritual/religious community.
Additionally, research provides us with a useful map of sorts when it comes to flourishing. Take care of your health (diet, exercise, sleep, etc.). Prioritize activities to bring happiness and a sense of meaning. Refine your character. Nurture your relationships. And do what you can to make ends meet.
Do this and you will flourish.
Your happiness nerd,
Jackson K.