Search Results

Why feeling good isn’t good enough. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points Happiness involves both emotions and beliefs; the latter, cognitive dimension is often called “life satisfaction.” Life satisfaction has stronger effects on other aspects of human flourishing than does the merely emotional dimension of happiness. Human flourishing, however, extends beyond just satisfaction with life. Perfect happiness is ultimately only possible if all aspects of life are good, and this is not fully attainable here and now. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. This research update from the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard discusses the role of happiness and life satisfaction in human life, its effects on other aspects of flourishing, and what it is that we are ultimately seeking. People want to be happy. Aristotle thought it uncontroversial that people, above all else, desire “happiness.” However, he hastened to add: “To say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is is still desired.” He recognized that we are fallible in understanding what we desire when we desire “happiness,” and are too apt to confuse it for pleasure. What is happiness, and what is its role in human life? Happiness is sometimes understood as a momentary emotion, as when people say, “I feel happy.” But most of us recognize that this is not all there is to happiness. This insight into the incompleteness of affective happiness prompted Aristotle, along with other classical and medieval philosophers, to insist that happiness is better understood as a judgment about one’s life as a whole. Happiness is thus sometimes also understood as more of a cognitive state, as life satisfaction, such as when people say, “I am happy with life.” Our own flourishing measure assesses both affective and cognitive happiness but using different questions for each. Various studies have examined both the causes or drivers of happiness and the consequences of happiness for other aspects of life. The research literature is vast. In a recent article, we’ve traced a brief “global history of happiness,” considering how the desire for happiness, broadly defined, plays an important role in various cultures and civilizations from ancient Egypt to the modern West. In another recent review article, we’ve tried to summarize some of the major drivers of happiness including the various social, environmental, economic, political, behavioral, and cultural forces that shape the happiness of individuals and populations. Our program’s new Psychology Research Scientist, Tim Lomas, is also about to release an entire book on happiness. And of course, there has been much else written on the topic. But one can also turn the question around, and ask what the consequences of happiness are for human life more generally. How does happiness contribute? Is happiness all that ultimately matters? What is the relationship between happiness and human flourishing? These questions have both conceptual and empirical answers. The Effects of Happiness A few years ago, a high-profile paper using data from the Million Women Study in the UK caused quite a stir in the public health community by providing evidence that affective happiness (feeling happy) had almost no association with longevity. While the study was criticized for using a poor measure of happiness (a single question with few response categories), in fact, our more thorough review of the literature on psychological well-being and mortality risk found fairly similar results. Of the factors assessed, affective happiness understood simply as feeling happy, had one of the weakest associations with longevity. Purpose in life, for instance, seemed to matter much more. However, the story with cognitive happiness or life satisfaction was more complicated. While the effects of life satisfaction on longevity are perhaps not quite as profound as they are with purpose in life, they are still substantial and, in another of our recent studies, we in fact found evidence for the effects of life satisfaction on a whole host of other important outcomes. Our study used longitudinal data from about 13,000 older adults in Health and Retirement Study, employing our outcome-wide designs drawing upon principles of causal inference. We found that those with high levels of life satisfaction were 26 percent less likely to die during follow-up than those with low levels, even after controlling for a host of social, demographic, economic, psychological, and health-related variables. We also found evidence for an effect of life satisfaction on various other outcomes including better self-rated health, better sleep, more exercise, higher purpose in life, lower depression, lower hopelessness, and lower loneliness. We did not, however, observe the effects of life satisfaction on all outcomes (e.g. the incidence of cancer or heart or lung disease, or rates of smoking or binge drinking, or time spent with children, family, and friends). Interestingly certain particular assessments of life satisfaction, such as finding one’s living conditions close to ideal, or just saying one was satisfied with life, were much more important than having no regrets, (e.g. thinking “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing”). This has important consequences for measurement as well, since even with “life satisfaction,” this is not a single monolithic construct. We need more nuanced assessments. In any case, the study provided evidence for important causal effects of life satisfaction on other aspects of human flourishing. Is Happiness All of Human Flourishing? Given its conceptual and empirical importance, some might wonder whether we might reduce all investigation of flourishing to life satisfaction alone? Doing so would have the advantage of giving us a single number, a single aspect of life, to focus upon. However, we would argue that doing this would be a mistake. First, it obscures other important aspects of flourishing. For example, while it is the case that richer developed countries have higher levels of life satisfaction than poorer developing countries, it conversely is the case that poorer developing countries report higher levels of purpose. This seems important and should arguably prompt questions as to how to go about development and economic growth in ways that do not compromise meaning and purpose. An exclusive focus on life satisfaction would miss this. Second, in some cases, someone might report high satisfaction with life but not really be flourishing. Someone may in principle be satisfied, and yet addicted to narcotics, or someone may be satisfied and yet completely socially isolated by their own choosing. We would not say that such persons are flourishing. Some studies and rankings, such as those in the World Happiness Report, use what is arguably a somewhat more adequate assessment of life evaluation, one which asks where an individual would place themselves on a ladder with steps numbered 0 to 10, with 10 representing the “best possible life” and 0 representing the “worst possible life” (sometimes called Cantril’s Ladder). This has the advantage of not just focusing on satisfaction alone. However, this kind of overall life evaluation can still be misleading, if it is taken to imply that well-being simply involves maximizing one’s average life evaluation score. Difficulties can arise especially with questions of character, virtue, and morality. A successful mafia boss might report high levels of life evaluation, but is this person flourishing? Conversely, someone who feels a moral obligation to do what is right might make choices that the person knows will result in lower lifetime average self-assessment on the ladder, and nevertheless proceed because it is the right thing to do. Not everyone is a utilitarian seeking to maximize their average life evaluation. Life evaluation and life satisfaction are important, but they are not the whole of well-being. The Dimensions of Flourishing Looking at life evaluation or composite summaries of well-being can be valuable, but ultimately we want to understand how dynamics may differ across different aspects of wellbeing. We’ve argued elsewhere that, at a minimum, we should be looking separately at happiness, health, meaning, character, social relationships, and financial security. The causes and consequences of each may differ, as indeed we saw above with affective happiness versus life satisfaction. Temporal trends may also differ across different aspects of flourishing, as in fact has been the case with the Covid-19 pandemic, which affected happiness, health, and financial security much more than meaning, character, or even relationships. This level of nuance should be the norm. As another example, a recent project in which our program was involved revealed that higher composite flourishing was associated with lower subsequent health care costs. This is important to know, but if we want to know what to do about it, we again need to examine how each aspect of flourishing individually affected subsequent costs. Perfect Happiness Is happiness or life satisfaction all that we are, or should be, seeking? We would argue that, in this life, the answer is “no.” There are numerous other important aspects of flourishing that we should be examining as well. Our feelings, and even our considered judgments, are at best partial indicators of how well our lives are actually going. The subjective and objective dimensions of flourishing can unfortunately at least partially come apart. Interestingly, however, both Aristotle and Aquinas do insist that happiness is effectively what we are ultimately seeking more than anything else. How should this be reconciled? Aquinas understood perfect happiness as the complete satisfaction of the will. The only way we can be completely satisfied with all of life is if we are fully flourishing, i.e. if all aspects of life are good. If something is not right, we will not be completely satisfied. Aquinas thought that the only way we could be completely satisfied was in a final vision of, or communion with, God. In this life, we are thus stuck with imperfect happiness, and that is shaped by a variety of different goods. While perfect happiness and complete eternal flourishing may in some sense coincide at the ultimate horizon, and while because of this we should thus also be assessing aspects of spiritual well-being, if we are to navigate life here and now as best as possible, we need to examine numerous aspects of wellbeing. Under present conditions, happiness and life satisfaction are important, but only partial, aspects of a truly flourishing life. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Kim, E.S., Delaney, S.W., Tay, L., Chen, Y., Diener, E., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2021). Life satisfaction and subsequent physical, behavioral, and psychosocial health in older adults. Milbank Quarterly, 99:209-239. Lomas, T., Case, B., Cratty, F., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2021). A global history of happiness. International Journal of Wellbeing, 11(4).

The importance of life together for health and well-being. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points Community life and social connectedness is central to our health and wellbeing. We need efforts to build and rebuild community life post-pandemic. A sensible community promotion approach could encourage religious community participation for those who self-identify with a religious tradition ...and encourage other forms of community life for those who do not Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. The year ahead, we hope, will be one of rebuilding. As this year draws to a close, it has sadly become clear that the pandemic is not yet over. The holiday season has come but in many places travel remains difficult, precarious, and restricted. Many look forward to time together with loved ones… but others are mourning losses of people, of places, of plans, and of hopes. While many have found ways to connect during the pandemic, and in some cases, relationships may have even deepened, the threat to community life has been very real. The sudden and often extended closure of schools, churches, public accommodations, and workplaces has weakened or even paralyzed many communities. Some of them have struggled through, managing and navigating the restrictions and conditions, while others wait hopefully for a better time. Many, however, have simply ceased to exist: the collateral damage of our fight against COVID. As we look towards the year ahead and hope for better circumstances, it is important to consider how we will rebuild—how we will recreate—community. Communities and Wellbeing Empirical research has, for some time, indicated the powerful effects that relationships, social support, and community participation have on health and wellbeing. As Aristotle observed, we are “political animals,” able to fully flourish only in community. When we are deeply embedded in relationships, we tend to thrive; when we are isolated, the cost to our wellbeing is considerable. For some time now at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, we have studied various aspects of communities, communal wellbeing, social participation, and their role in flourishing. We have published on the role of social support in healthy aging, on the role of social cohesion in wellbeing, on the effects of loneliness on depression, and on the role of volunteering communities in promoting health. It is clear in this research that communities make critical contributions to the wellbeing of our country and of our world. We have also been examining what it means for a community itself to function well and we have developed assessments of communal wellbeing which we have been employed in cities, schools, long-term care facilities, and elsewhere to try to understand in what ways different communities are and are not flourishing. We hope in this work to facilitate and promote flourishing at both individual and community levels. Religious Communities Much of our research has also highlighted the important role that religious communities play in human flourishing, including preventing depression and suicide, extending longevity, improving marital outcomes, facilitating happiness, meaning, forgiveness, and hope. The size of the effects of religious community participation tend to exceed those of other forms of social participation. With regard to effects on mortality, suicide, and cardiovascular disease, the effects of religious service participation are larger than for any other social participation indicator examined, including marriage, time spent with friends or family, hours spent in other community groups, or even their composite. While the empirical research itself has become increasingly clear, the implications of this research requires more nuance. In particular, it does not necessarily mean that everyone should immediately join a religious community. Religious commitments and beliefs are shaped most fundamentally by values, relationships, truth claims, evidence, systems of meaning, and experiences. Very few become religious for the sake of physical health. However, as we have recently argued in a commentary in the American Journal of Epidemiology, while the implications of the research need to be approached carefully, there are indeed important implications for public health. We argue that while the research in no way suggests a universal “prescription” for religious service attendance, it does perhaps constitute an invitation back into communal religious life for those who might already positively self-identify with a religious tradition. We discuss how religious service attendance could be promoted for those who positively self-identify with a religious tradition, and other forms of community life could be promoted for those who do not, and we discuss how this might be done in thoughtful, sensitive, and ethically reasonable manner both within clinical and public health settings. Religious communities—like all institutions—have their own struggles and problems, e.g., regarding sexual abuse, or in responding appropriately to the pandemic. But there have also been important efforts to address these issues which have, in many cases, been successful, dramatically lowering the incidence of abuse and working with public health efforts to mitigate the spread of infection while preserving the important ends of religious communities themselves. There’s no contradiction between recognizing the tremendous good offered by these and other communities and vigorously seeking to reform them; indeed, the former arguably entails the latter. Social Connectedness and Belonging Because of the importance of social relationships and community, we have recently established a new project on social connectedness and belonging. Over the course of this coming year we will be preparing for a small international research workshop in early 2023 and for a larger open conference later that year bringing together scholars, practitioners, politicians, and community leaders to reflect upon how we can create connectedness, foster belonging, address loneliness, and rebuild communities. We hope that this new initiative will strengthen our work on this important topic further, and offer some small contribution towards enhancing and encouraging community life. Re-Establishing and Strengthening Communities Of course, some of the hard work of rebuilding will require courageous leaders and community members to devote their time and resources to sustaining or re-establishing community life or preserving what exists until a fuller re-opening is possible. But the rebuilding of community will also require decisions from countless individuals to re-engage once again, to reinvest in what have perhaps become more distant or estranged relationships, or to go through the hard work of establishing new ones. Rebuilding community is ultimately the work of everyone. Is this realistic? The law of entropy applies to societies as much as physical systems: it is always easier to destroy a community than to build or rebuild one. Already before the pandemic, community participation had been in decline, as documented in the United States for example in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Peering forward towards the year ahead, with COVID infection rates on the rise yet again in many places, can be daunting. But whether it is now, or in six months, or sometime later, there is rebuilding to do. Efforts to participate in, establish, build, and rebuild community can be effective. In just a few days’ time, many people from all over the world will celebrate Christmas. An event - the birth of a child – has, over the past two millennia, formed a community of over two billion people, drawn from every region of the globe. The growth of this community did not take place overnight, but was forged bit by bit through the sacrifice, the love, the common values, and the shared vision for a transcendent end of its members. At its best, community brings people together, offers a sense of belonging, and points us towards what is most important. We are social creatures. We need community. Let us work together in the year, and years, ahead to help re-establish what was lost, to rebuild community, and to strengthen it yet further. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References VanderWeele, T.J. (2019). Measures of community well-being: a template. International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2:253-275. VanderWeele, T. J., Balboni, T. A., & Koh, H. K. (2021). Religious service attendance and implications for clinical care, community participation and public health. American Journal of Epidemiology, doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwab134.

Comparing public, private, religious, and home schooling. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points In a sample of children of nurses, we found few differences in young adult outcomes between graduates of public vs. private schools. Homeschoolers were less likely to attend college than public schoolers, but were more forgiving and purposeful, and more likely to volunteer. Flourishing is multi-dimensional and different types of schools have different advantages and disadvantages. Education ought to promote human flourishing, and different schools have different opportunities for improvement. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. A newborn horse can run alongside its mother an hour after its birth. We humans, by contrast, require what Plato described as “a long and arduous development, involving a good deal of trouble and education” (Theaetetus). The formation of young people over years and decades decisively shapes the future of human society, which is perhaps why our most enduring institutions—the family, the religious community, and the state—have all taken a keen interest in it. Those enduring interests are evident today in the range of school types available to students, from public schools to private schools, to religious schools, and, in the United States at least, a growing proportion of home-schooling. Much of the prior research on school types has, quite understandably, focused on the crucial outcomes of educational attainment and subsequent employment opportunities. However, schools and education also shape many other aspects of a child's life. There has thus been an increasing emphasis on education for flourishing. While the acquisition of skills and knowledge is central to the manner in which education enhances flourishing, it makes sense also to examine how different types of schooling affect a whole range of subsequent health and well-being outcomes. Study of School Types Our study used data on 12,288 participants from the Growing Up Today Study, which is a study of children of nurses from the Nurses’ Health Study at Harvard. In interpreting the results of our study, it will be important to bear in mind the characteristics of this study population since, on the whole, the mothers of these children are a well-educated cohort. Our study used longitudinal data on school type (public, private, religious, home-school) in 1999, controlled for a host of social, demographic, economic, and health-related variables, and examined a wide range of well-being outcomes in 2007-2013 when the participants were young adults. The results were somewhat surprising. What We Found Contrary to what we might have expected, we found almost no difference in well-being outcomes between those students who attended public schools versus private schools in this sample. This was the comparison with the largest sample size, for which we had the most power to detect effects, and yet we found almost nothing. In some ways, however, it is reassuring that our outcome-wide approaches, with rigorous design and good confounding control, can deliver such results, when relevant, even across a host of outcomes. Also striking was that we found relatively few differences between public schooling and religious schooling. There was some evidence that those who attended religious schools were very slightly more likely to subsequently register to vote, very slightly less likely to be obese, had slightly fewer lifetime sexual partners, but had a slightly greater likelihood of engaging in binge drinking. This is surprising, in part because our prior research had indicated that a religious upbringing contributes substantially to subsequent health and wellbeing. What the present study does seem to suggest is that it is religious service attendance itself that appears to be the more dominant influence, at least for the outcomes examined. Contrary to our expectations, we found relatively few differences in subsequent young adult outcomes when comparing public, private, and religious schooling. The one comparison for which the differences in subsequent outcomes were more substantial was for home-schooling compared to public schooling. For this, the differences in subsequent outcomes were much larger but were in different directions for different outcomes. Our study indicated that those who were home-schooled were subsequently more likely to volunteer, to have a sense of purpose, to be forgiving, to attend religious services in young adulthood, to have fewer lifetime sexual partners, and to have notably less marijuana use. However, the study also indicated that those who were home-schooled were subsequently about 23 percent less likely to go on to attain a college degree. One might imagine both sides of the home-schooling debate claim from these results, “See… I was right!” Understanding the Context In interpreting the results of our study, it is important to consider the context of these analyses. First, as noted above, the participants in the study were all children of nurses, a relatively well-off group by national standards. It is entirely possible that the mothers and fathers of these children were especially invested in their children’s education and that if a particular school context—public, private, religious, home—was not working well for that child, the parents would be motivated to find a different setting. If this were so, it might explain some of the similar results across school types. Second, while we examined a range of different outcomes, some of the motivations given for religious schooling or home-schooling often concern formation of character or knowledge of religious teachings and, for the most part, our ability to examine such outcomes was limited. However, as noted above, the character outcomes we did have (e.g. volunteering, forgiveness) were, when comparing home-schooling and public schooling, among the few outcomes for which there were differences. Finally, the study concerned schooling experiences about 20 years ago and a lot has changed since that time. The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the schooling experience, creating new challenges and difficulties across various contexts. Moreover, many parents have felt forced into home-schooling, rather than having chosen it themselves. Culture has also changed with policies and questions around gender identity playing an increasingly prominent role in public school contexts. Education and schools are undoubtedly part of, and are shaped by, the broader culture of which they are a part and so any examination of the effects of schooling will be bound by the culture, the time, and the population under study. Flourishing and School Choice The results on home-schooling are perhaps especially relevant given the dramatic increase in home-schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Surveys indicate that the proportion of homeschooling has increased from about 3.3 percent of students pre-pandemic to 11.1 percent this school year. Many of those new homeschoolers will doubtless return to public or private schools as the pandemic recedes, but it may be that, for some, the COVID-19 homeschooling experience results in their continuing homeschooling indefinitely. Our results comparing public school and home-schooling might also be viewed as providing a challenge to both public school contexts and home-schooling contexts alike. For public schools, the results might be seen as a call to strengthen character education, perhaps using one of the growing number of curriculum-based character programs discussed in one of our previous postings. For home-schooling parents, the results may indicate a need to strengthen college preparedness. It may not be the case that academic achievement is principally responsible for the differences in college outcomes. We did not have access to achievement test scores in our current data and so were not able to examine this, and prior work comparing home-schooling and public schooling on academic ability has been mixed in its findings. Academic achievement may indeed be relevant, but other aspects of the culture of homeschooling, or of admissions policies, may also be at play. Nevertheless, the lower likelihood of going on to obtain a college degree was clear. This result should provide food for thought for homeschooling parents regarding academic learning and additional motivation to invest in college preparedness. As we’ve argued before, flourishing is multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. It cannot be reduced to a single number. Different aspects of life may affect flourishing in different ways and different aspects of flourishing may be weighed differently by different people. Our study suggests that, for relatively well-educated parents at least, reasonably consistent life outcomes can be achieved irrespective of public, private, or religious schooling. There do seem to be some real trade-offs, in the present cultural context (or at least those which prevailed 20 years ago), between home-schooling and public schooling. This is arguably an invitation for each school type to aim for yet further improvement. This research also creates an opportunity to reflect on the goals and ends of education and schooling. Different systems may have different advantages. Home-schooling perhaps allows for greater opportunity and flexibility concerning character formation. Public schools may have greater resources for ensuring college preparedness. Because the ends of education are diverse, and the extent to which these ends are valued vary, there is arguable value in allowing school choice. Parenting and education are complex and challenging tasks; they require both an embeddedness within communities and a freedom in the numerous decisions that have to be made. Rather than insisting on a single school type, we should work together to ensure that all educational settings promote human flourishing to fullest extent possible. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Chen, Y., Hinton, C., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2021). School types in adolescence and subsequent health and well-being in young adulthood: An outcome-wide analysis. PLOS ONE, 16(11): e0258723. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258723

How work and other aspects of life affect one another. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points Wellbeing in life affects wellbeing at work and vice versa, but life satisfaction generally has a greater impact on job satisfaction. The direction of causality between work and life varies in different wellbeing domains, such as meaning, purpose, depression and relationships. Work can contribute to wellbeing. Organizational- and group- level workplace practices can help employees thrive. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. Our work and the other aspects of our lives are intertwined in various ways. While this has always been the case, it has perhaps become even more so during the present Covid-19 pandemic. Many are working from home or working more flexible hours, with work tasks often interwoven with home and family tasks. What happens at work may be brought into home life. What happens amongst friends and family, or our very understanding of the role of work itself, may affect how we feel about work and what we do at work. Wellbeing at work may affect wellbeing in life, and vice versa. It has in fact long been known that job satisfaction and life satisfaction are strongly correlated, but there has been debate as to whether that is principally because job satisfaction contributes to life satisfaction, or rather whether life satisfaction, in general, tends to “spill over,” making one more satisfied with one’s job. The majority of the evidence, from a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, suggests that while there may be an effect in both directions, the effect of life satisfaction on job satisfaction appears to be larger than the effect of job satisfaction on life satisfaction. There is spillover from being satisfied with life into being satisfied with one’s job. But life satisfaction is only one aspect of flourishing. We might wonder whether we see similar patterns not just with life satisfaction, but with feeling happy, or with social relationships, or with feeling depressed, or with having a sense of meaning and purpose at work versus in life. It is possible that the relationships between wellbeing at work and wellbeing in life might vary across these different domains of wellbeing. In a recent empirical study, we set out to try to examine evidence for how these relationships might play out across different domains of flourishing. Looking at Wellbeing Over Time To be able to answer these sorts of questions, one needs longitudinal data. As we’ve pointed out in prior short pieces summarizing some important principles of causal inference, one needs data on the same set of individuals over multiple time points. Cross-sectional studies, in which all of the data is collected at once, will, in general, be worthless in addressing these questions. With cross-sectional data, if we find that life satisfaction and job satisfaction are correlated, there is absolutely no way to tell if that is because job satisfaction causes life satisfaction, or if life satisfaction causes job satisfaction, or both. What we need again is data over time to examine how job satisfaction at one time-point might predict life satisfaction at a subsequent time-point, controlling for baseline life satisfaction, as well as a host of potential confounding variables; and then doing something similar in the other direction. Such evidence isn’t necessarily definitive, but it is a step closer to what we need to discern the direction of causality. And we can take a similar approach not only for job/life satisfaction but for other aspects of wellbeing also, such as meaning in life versus meaning at work, or relationships in life versus relationships at work. Together with our colleagues at the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE), we recently published a study using data on 954 employees at factories in Mexico, examining wellbeing in life and wellbeing at work at two different time-points to evaluate the relevant evidence. In addition to using the longitudinal design described above, we also controlled for a number of other social, demographic, and job-related characteristics. We examined wellbeing across a number of different domains including life/job satisfaction, happiness, meaning, purpose, depression, and social relationships. Directions of Causality Vary Across Different Aspects of Wellbeing The results were striking because the evidence suggested that the direction of causality was rather different across these domains. For some aspects of wellbeing, the evidence suggested that relationships were indeed reciprocal, including happiness at work and happiness in life, or job satisfaction and life satisfaction (though again consistent with prior evidence, we found stronger estimated effects for life satisfaction on job satisfaction than for the reverse). For one’s sense of purpose and for social relationships, however, there was evidence that wellbeing at work had a much more pronounced effect on wellbeing in life than vice versa. The purpose one found in work subsequently promoted a sense of general life purpose, while social connectedness at work contributed subsequently to a richer sense of social connectedness in life. However, for other aspects of wellbeing, the effects seemed to operate in the reverse direction: Being depressed in life led to a sense of depression at work, but the reverse was not the case. Likewise, having a sense of meaning in life subsequently contributed to a sense of meaning at work, but not vice versa. This last result is perhaps particularly striking because the causal effects appeared to operate in different directions for meaning versus purpose. Those two terms – meaning and purpose – are often used interchangeably, but as we’ve discussed elsewhere, and as is now commonly done within psychology and within philosophy, the two can be distinguished. Purpose is more end-directed, whereas meaning is more about an understanding of the broader context of things. In terms of the pursuit of ends and goals, purpose at work gives rise to a sense of purpose in life. However, with regard to meaning, the evidence here suggests that finding one’s life and activities worthwhile is what more profoundly contributes to an understanding of meaning in one’s work, while feeling one’s work is meaningful doesn’t necessarily give one what one needs to find meaning in one’s life activities more generally. The Future of Work Though work and the rest of life can profoundly shape one another for the better, tensions between these domains are also sadly all too common. Understanding and addressing these potential conflicts were key aims of our recent virtual symposium on the future of work. A theme threaded through the symposium’s papers was the importance of keeping the whole of a worker’s life in view when considering economic structures and workplace policies. Russell Hittinger, a theologian and member of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, highlighted Catholic social teaching’s emphasis on the principle of “subsidiarity,” and discussed belonging to communities other than the state, and the role of “three necessary societies” (the family, the polity, and the church), each with its distinctive role to play in human flourishing, and each owing “help (subsidium)” and proper deference to the others. Sociologist Laurie DeRose argued that a culture of “workism” seems to be an important factor in driving down birth rates across the developed world. One of our great cultural challenges today lies in preventing the workplace from overwhelming the goods of family life in particular. Promoting Wellbeing at Work and in Life How can the workplace better contribute to employee’s overall well-being, and to the wellbeing of their families? We’ve commented previously on how work itself contributes to wellbeing, and how supportive employment programs can help even those with considerable impairments to find work and potentially enhance wellbeing. We’ve also commented on how employee activities like job-crafting – finding meaning at work and in relationships, and seeking more efficient ways to work – can enhance work engagement and wellbeing. However, managers can also implement group- or even organization-level changes to help employees thrive. This too has been a topic of increasingly rigorous studies. The Work, Family, and Health Study was a randomized trial to promote family-supportive supervisory behaviors and employee control over work location and schedule. It was conducted among both 1,000 information technology professionals and 700 long-term healthcare facility workers and found to have important effects on employee wellbeing, on adequacy of sleep, on control over schedule, and on better and more family time, and it accomplished this without reducing total work hours or increasing job demands. Some of our colleagues at Harvard have likewise also recently completed a systematic review of organizational- and group-level interventions that potentially enhance various dimensions of worker wellbeing. Workers and their employers ought to be a source of mutual benefit. Workplaces should be one of the communities within society that have relations of aid and assistance with individuals and with other communities. The workers help to create their employers’ goods and services that are of benefit to society, and the employers offer wages to support workers and their families. However, an increasingly large body of research makes clear that more could be done to promote wellbeing at work, to improve family-supportive practices, and to enhance greater meaning in work and of more meaningful relationships. The true purpose of work is the promotion of human flourishing, through the achieving of human potential, and through the meeting of the needs and aspirations of mankind by the goods and services produced. Workers and workplaces ought ultimately to be aligned in this vision. Improving wellbeing in life will improve wellbeing at work, contributing to the productivity and wellbeing of workers and society alike. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Weziak-Bialowolska, D., Bialowolski, P., Sacco, P.L., VanderWeele, T.J., and McNeely, E. (2020). Well-being in life and well-being at work: which comes first? Evidence from a longitudinal study. Frontiers in Public Health, 8:103. A recording of the Work and Well-Being in 21st Century America symposium: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu_EEROrDC0 The Work, Family, and Health Study's toolkits for workplace change: workfamilyhealthnetwork.org/toolkits-achieve-workplace-change The Work and Wellbeing Initiative's employer toolkit resources: workwellbeinginitiative.org/employertoolkits/Overview

The empirical study of character and virtue. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points There are commonalities in the understanding of character across numerous philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions. Character is not easy to empirically assess and study but various methodological approaches can partially address these challenges. The study, promotion, and formation of good character may help contribute to greater individual and community well-being. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. Aristotle conceived of happiness as being attained by living in accord with virtue, and virtually all philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions have likewise placed some notion of character or virtue at the heart of their conception of well-being. Moreover, some cross-cultural research has suggested that a number of character strengths or virtues are arguably held in common across diverse cultures and traditions. These include what are sometimes called the “cardinal virtues” of practical wisdom, justice, courage or fortitude, and temperance. During the past couple of decades, both in the social sciences and in other parts of society, there has perhaps been some hesitancy to address character and virtue. In part, this might have been motivated by concerns of over-emphasizing the role of institutions and structures in shaping human behavior, and perhaps also by a concern that the concepts themselves are parochially “Western.” But the consistency across most cultures of the importance of character itself, and also in what strengths of character are considered important, might suggest that these notions have been abandoned too quickly. So how is it that character might contribute to, or even be constitutive of, well-being? Character and Virtue Character itself has been variously defined as “a set of personal traits or dispositions that produce specific moral emotions, inform motivation and guide conduct” (Jubilee Centre) or alternatively as “the sum of the moral and mental qualities which distinguish an individual” (Oxford English Dictionary). Character is not necessarily easy to alter. It is shaped in part by one’s temperament, by decisions and habits that are formed over years, and by one’s communities. But character is also part of what makes us who we are, and itself shapes our capacity to pursue the good and attain well-being. As one’s character is strengthened by habits that are in accord with reason and that help us attain what is good, we might say that it becomes “virtuous.” In much of the western philosophical tradition (and again related ideas appear in other cultural traditions as well) a virtue has been understood as a habit in accord with reason to attain the good. Understood thus, by its very definition, virtue helps one attain the good. It contributes to well-being. But many traditions of virtue ethics understand virtue not only as helping one attain what is good, but also as constitutive of the good, of well-being itself. Virtue – living in accord with reason; living to attain the good – is its own reward, because it fulfills our nature as human beings. Empirical Studies of Character and Well-Being For the past several years, we have been making various attempts at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard to empirically study different aspects of character. This is no easy task. Much empirical research is carried out by self-report surveys and something like character assessment may be especially difficult to accurately assess by self-report, subject to both social-desirability and self-deception biases. We have in fact recently released a report, published in the Journal of Education, on the numerous challenges in, but also the tremendous opportunities for, the empirical study of character. While self-report of various aspects of character may be subject to various degrees of exaggeration, there might still be meaningful information in these assessments. On an assessment of courage, say, there may be real differences between someone who self-reports, a 7 out of 10 versus a 9 out of 10, even if both scores would have been reported two points lower on more objective grounds or by a third-party observer. Some studies have in fact indicated a relatively high degree of correlation between self-report and other-report assessments. This does not mean the scores are identical, only that they probably contain some meaningful information. Moreover, when longitudinal data over time are available, one can study changes in self-reports of character. Even if the absolute scores themselves are exaggerated, a change in self-report over time for an individual may indicate some meaningful change in the person’s life. In fact, this was the sort of approach we used in a recent empirical analysis. We looked at one of the character items from our flourishing index, namely, “I always act to promote good in all circumstances, even in difficult and challenging situations” for which participants gave responses from 0 (= not true of me) to 10 (= completely true of me) and collected data over either two or three waves from employees in two different samples in the United States and Mexico. We examined how this character assessment indicator, or changes in it, affected subsequent well-being, while also controlling for the same outcomes at baseline, along with a host of other demographic, social, economic, and health-related variables. We found that those who reported positive changes in this character assessment item subsequently had higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction, greater purpose in life, and greater social connectedness. Character, at least as assessed by this particular item, did appear to contribute meaningfully to future well-being. Some of our other prior work has examined associations over time with other aspects of character, such as forgiveness, volunteering, and hope. The incorporation of character items into large longitudinal cohort studies could facilitate more research along these lines. Character Interventions Character can also in part be empirically studied by examining the effects of interventions to help shape character. Our report on the challenges and opportunities for empirical character assessment briefly discusses a number of character interventions, evaluated in randomized trials, that have successfully altered aspects of character such as gratitude, compassion, patience, forgiveness, and perseverance/grit, along with evidence that some of these also go on to improve psychological well-being, mental health, and other outcomes. Indeed this randomized trial approach is how we are going about evaluating the effects of a forgiveness workbook intervention, a study that will soon be reaching its conclusion. Various character education programs, resources, and materials have also been developed (such as those available at the UK’s Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues), and the Journal of Education will in fact soon be releasing a special issue on character education. But once again, there are inevitably challenges. Many of the existing school-based character programs, while arguably well-conceived, still need more formal rigorous assessment. Also, as detailed in our report, some of the other character items we have explored do not seem to have worked quite as well as the one above, at least with respect to the evidence we have to date. Some aspects of character may be more amenable to self-report assessments than others. We need a better understanding of what can and cannot be reasonably assessed, and we likely need greater methodological diversity and conceptual clarity in the approaches taken to character assessment. Character, Love, and the Well-Being of Others Some of the challenges of character assessment were in fact what led a number of us at the Human Flourishing Program to focus more specifically on character assessment as it relates to love, a project concerning which we’ve recently received funding from the John Templeton Foundation to pursue. While the topic of love has perhaps not received adequate academic attention, and the attention it has received at least from psychology has often focused on romantic love, there is arguably a great deal to be learned about the promotion of human flourishing from the study of love. Indeed there are both classical and contemporary claims that our various loves effectively shape all of our actions, and much of the Christian tradition has insisted that charity, the love of God and neighbor, is the highest of the virtues. The exploration of love also introduces an important complexity in the empirical study of character and well-being. Virtue, understood as a habit in accord with reason to attain the good, may contribute to one’s own good, but it may also contribute to the good of others. Indeed, when we think of people we consider as having strong character, often these are people who have sacrificed something of their own good for the sake of the good of others. These effects of love and of other virtues on the lives of others have important implications for our research designs. The vast majority of empirical research studies on character, and on many other topics, attempt to examine the associations of some type of behavior or attribute with various outcomes for the same individual. But if certain virtues or character strengths like compassion, or generosity, or forgiveness, or justice, sometimes involve sacrificing some good for oneself for the sake of others, or for the community, then such research designs are not going to be adequate. We will be entirely missing the effects of such actions or aspects of character on others’ lives. Indeed certain aspects of character might appear, in individually focused studies, to be detrimental to aspects of well-being, when in fact they contribute substantially to the common good. In future studies of character, we should almost certainly, when feasible, try to collect outcome data on other members of the community as well, or at least be aware of the limitations in interpretation in not doing so. Character is important. It is both constitutive of, and contributes to, the well-being of the individual and of the community. If we find ways to assist with the formation of character, drawing upon the rich traditions of the past, and potentially examining the effects of character education programs with the research methodologies of the present, we may be better able to promote well-being and create a better world. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References VanderWeele, T.J. (2021). The importance, opportunities, and challenges of empirically assessing character for the promotion of flourishing. Journal of Education, in press. doi: 10.1177/00220574211026905 Węziak-Białowolska, D., Białowolski, P., VanderWeele, T.J., and McNeely, E. (2021). Character strengths involving an orientation to promote good can help your health and well-being. Evidence from two longitudinal studies. American Journal of Health Promotion, 35:388-398.

Challenges, recommendations, and new horizons on well-being assessment. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points The flourishing index assesses aspects of well-being—health, happiness, meaning, relationships, character—widely desired for their own sake. Different well-being assessments are recommended for different contexts depending on the intended purpose and time or space available. Universal and individual aspects of well-being should be assessed, as well as culturally or religiously specific and communal aspects. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. So much of a flourishing life is irreducibly personal and subjective. How can we quantify the joy we feel at our children's smiles or the satisfaction we find in our work? It would seem impossible that we could measure this kind of flourishing. Nonetheless, those of us at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard are endeavoring to investigate this elusive reality, in part through our own flourishing measure, which captures core aspects of well-being, such as health, happiness, meaning, character, and social relationships, but also with other approaches. In 2018, we, along with our colleagues at the Center for Health and Happiness, hosted an interdisciplinary workshop — including psychologists, sociologists, public health researchers, philosophers, theologians, economists, policymakers, and foundation leaders — to reflect on how we might better assess well-being in all its multifaceted richness and across a variety of settings. The workshop participants have continued to pursue and write about these questions, three years following that symposium, we have published an edited volume on Measuring Well-Being. Our Prior Measurement Work: The Flourishing Index To date, much of our empirical research on well-being has incorporated the flourishing index that was proposed in a 2017 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That paper also included a working definition of flourishing as living in "a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good." Defined so broadly, flourishing might seem to be unmeasurable. Moreover, what is considered good will of course vary across cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions. So, can any progress on measurement be made? Granted that conceptions of flourishing will vary across traditions, nonetheless we would argue that any reasonable conception of flourishing will also, at the very least, encompass the following five domains of human life: Happiness and life satisfaction Physical and mental health Meaning and purpose Character and virtue Close social relationships The argument is not that flourishing is reducible to these five domains, but that any reasonable conception of flourishing — whatever else it might include — would include these five domains as well. Each of these is arguably (i) nearly universally desired, and (ii) constitutes its own end (it is sought for its own sake, not only as a means to some other end). These two criteria — of being nearly universally desired and being an end — might help shape consensus around what to measure. Our flourishing index assessment includes two well-being questions (principally drawn from the existing, validated well-being literature) in each of these five domains. We also typically supplement these 10 questions with two additional questions on financial and material stability, since these are important means to sustaining the various other ends. To date, we've used this flourishing index assessment on over 100,000 individuals in settings including workplaces, hospitals, secondary schools, universities, long-term care facilities, and national surveys. Data on the flourishing index will also be included in the next round of data collection for the Nurses' Health Study — a major cohort study run at Harvard for decades, which has provided the data for many of our analyses on topics ranging from religious service attendance to purpose in life to deaths of despair to forgiveness to healthy aging. Having the flourishing index questions in the Nurses' Health Study data will help empower the creation of a "positive epidemiology," aimed at understanding the determinants of a flourishing life. The flourishing index questions will also constitute an important subset of the well-being questions in our upcoming Global Flourishing Study. Recommendations for Well-Being Measurement Nonetheless, while this flourishing index is versatile and has many important uses, it is not the right tool for all circumstances. In some studies, one might desire a far more substantial assessment of well-being, using more questions with greater nuance. However, in other contexts, even 10 or 12 questions might be considered a lot. In major national surveys, perhaps fewer questions can be included. Moreover, a survey that works well for a multi-use cohort study might not be appropriate for a workplace or clinical context. Given these various and competing needs and constraints, the participants in our workshop also helped formulate an interdisciplinary set of recommendations regarding potential questions and kinds of assessments that might be most suitable for different purposes. We acknowledged that these recommendations were provisional, as our knowledge and understanding of well-being measurement is advancing rapidly, but they provide some guidance for those new to the field, or for those who perhaps wanted to begin to collect well-being data in surveys designed principally for other purposes. For a brief but broad assessment, our flourishing index is a useful approach, but it is not the right tool for all contexts. As with any set of recommendations, these too are also subject to critique, and critique did indeed follow. Carol Ryff and colleagues put forward a dissenting view and also expressed particular concern about brief well-being assessments, perhaps especially single-item well-being assessments, arguing that they trivialized the field of well-being research. In our response, we in turn argued that even brief single-item well-being assessments can be informative, and that a brief assessment is better than nothing at all. It is of course important to be aware of what is being missed — of what is not being assessed — with any measure. Nevertheless, short measures can still arguably be helpful. What we measure shapes what we discuss, what we know, what we aim for, and the policies put in place to achieve it. To not measure well-being at all is, in many contexts, to leave it out of the discussion. Even a brief assessment can often be useful. Exploring New Frontiers However, if flourishing is indeed to be understood as living in "a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good," then we must again acknowledge that no measurement — no assessment — is going to be fully adequate. Moreover, any well-developed understanding of flourishing will almost certainly include additional aspects of life that extend beyond happiness, health, meaning, character, and relationships. For much of the world's population, some notion of spiritual well-being will also be highly important — sometimes the most important — and its specific content will of course vary across the world's diverse spiritual and religious traditions. There may be other culturally specific aspects of well-being that are not adequately captured by more universal assessments. Moreover, the notion of well-being or flourishing extends beyond the individual and also includes communal well-being. Our book Measuring Well-Being explores these frontiers of well-being assessment. It brings together social scientists, biomedical researcher, philosophers, theologians, and policy-makers to begin to push the frontiers of well-being assessment into these other areas. A more adequate approach to measuring well-being will likely combine generic, universal assessments (around which we can obtain consensus) with culturally or religiously specific assessments, communal well-being assessments, and, when resources allow, more nuanced, assessments of the more granular elements of well-being. In addition to these contributions and debates, our book also offers policy reflections on well-being; provides various contributions from the humanities; and surveys how different aspects of psychological well-being relate to physical health, and how different aspects of well-being relate to each other. It also includes new measures of meaning, of peace, of spiritual well-being, of community well-being… and much else besides. We very much hope that Measuring Well-Being, along with the ideas, conversations, debates, and new approaches that may arise from it, will help shape new and more complete approaches to measuring well-being — to measuring the unmeasurable. And we hope that by better measuring and studying well-being, we may be able to better promote it, and to bring about a better world. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Lee, M. T., Kubzansky, L. D., & VanderWeele, T. J. (Eds.). (2021). Measuring Well-being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Oxford University Press. VanderWeele, T.J. (2017). On the promotion of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 31:8148-8156. VanderWeele, T.J., Trudel-Fitzgerald, C., Allin, P., Farrelly, C., Fletcher, G., Frederick, D.E., Hall, J., Helliwell, J.F., Kim, E.S., Lauinger, W.A., Lee, M.T., Lyubomirsky, S., Margolis, S., McNeely, E., Messer, N., Tay, L., Viswanath, V., Węziak-Białowolska, D., and Kubzansky, L.D. (2020). Current recommendations on the selection of measures for well-being. Preventive Medicine, 133:106004.

More work is needed to bring justice and healing. By Tyler J. VanderWeele, Jennifer Wortham, and Brendan Case Key points Childhood sexual abuse is a widespread problem and has been a major issue in religious communities. Many religious institutions have begun taking steps to better safeguard children, which have led to important declines in sexual abuse rates, but much work remains to be done. Research is needed to determine the best strategies for prevention, to assess the best approaches to healing, and to continue to uncover the extent of the problem. Healing is critically needed for victims, their loved ones and communities. Even perpetrators need a kind of healing as they acknowledge and face justice for their wrongdoing. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. In our last research update, we highlighted the important role religious communities play in promoting human flourishing, with religious service attendance extending longevity, preventing depression, encouraging healthy behaviors, and facilitating happiness, purpose in life, and social integration. Indeed, one of the major contributions of the Human Flourishing Program has been providing rigorous evidence to establish these links. However, we also noted that sometimes religious communities hinder human flourishing, an especially prominent instance of this being the ongoing child sexual abuse scandals in religious institutions. Child Sexual Abuse in Religious Communities The problem initially came to greater public attention within the United States in 2002, through a series of investigative news stories on clergy sexual abuse – and efforts to cover it up – within the Catholic Church. Thousands of painful and horrific cases have come to light since. And over the past two decades it has also become evident that child sexual abuse is a global crisis, afflicting the Catholic Church from Ireland to Australia, and besetting many other faith traditions as well, from the Southern Baptist Convention to the Church of England to Orthodox Judaism. The lack of transparency and mismanagement of this issue have yet further harmed victims, and have led many to question their faith or leave outright. These instances of sexual abuse ought not to have happened. Much work remains to be done to address the wrongs that took place, to bring justice, and to bring healing. Steps Taken to Address Abuse Many religious institutions have begun to take steps to help better safeguard children. In 2002, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops published a Charter for the Protection of Children, which established norms for safeguarding children including an independent annual review of the Church’s progress. In 2015, Pope Francis launched the Papal Commission for the Protection of Minors, which is composed of leading child sexual abuse experts from around the globe, who work collaboratively with the Vatican to develop safeguarding programs and policies for Catholic institutions. The Church of Latter Day Saints, the Episcopal Church (USA), and the Southern Baptist Convention, among others, have also established comprehensive training and child safeguarding programs. These are significant developments, which will have a lasting impact on these institutions and help to prevent future abuses. Indeed, rates of abuse within the Catholic Church, for example, appear to have decreased rather substantially since 2002. Just as the media did important work in uncovering these problems, it should also highlight and encourage the work that has been done in trying to find solutions. However, the more recent successes that have taken place with prevention do not excuse the wrongdoing of the past, nor do they heal those who have already suffered, nor do they bring justice, but they are important steps in the transition from a culture of secrecy to one of prevention, accountability, and transparency. They help ensure that such things are less likely to happen again in the generations ahead, even though more work remains to be done. Childhood Sexual Abuse Outside of Religious Communities Child sexual abuse is of course a pressing issue outside of religious contexts as well. Non-religious organizations have faced abuse crises of their own: in recent years, there have been widely publicized reports of child sexual abuse in, e.g., primary and secondary schools, the U.S. Gymnastics Association, and the Boy Scouts. The prevalence of pedophilia in the adult male population is estimated at 5%, which is similar to or in some cases greater than estimates of abuse among Catholic priests (e.g., 4% in the United States, 4.4% in Germany, 7% in Australia). According to the CDC, approximately 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys experience child sexual abuse at some point in childhood (perpetrated, in 91% of cases, by a family member or someone close to the family). Because of the shame, stigma, and fear associated with their experience, 60% or more of victims never disclose their abuse. If they do not get the help they need to heal, these individuals may experience long-term consequences to their physical health, mental health, and well-being. However, that this problem is widespread in no way excuses what has taken place within religious communities. Such communities – in their calling to provide moral exemplars, to reflect upon and promote high ethical standards, and to point towards the highest goods, towards God and the transcendent – should be held to especially high standards of accountability. Next Steps for Healing and Prevention Much work remains to be done. Research is needed to continue to uncover the extent of the problem, to determine the best strategies for prevention, to assess the best approaches to healing, and understand how this might vary by context and person. While considerable progress has made in improving efforts for prevention, we know much less about, and arguably fewer efforts have been made towards, providing healing for those who have previously suffered abuse. Communities need to be able to share best practices. The best thinking from psychology, counseling, public health, ethics, and moral theology needs to be brought together to help shape the most effective approaches to healing and to prevention. Perhaps more subtly, we also need to better understand the forces that have created these problems to begin with. Human sexuality, in and of itself, is a tremendous good. Handled properly, it of course is responsible for future generations and the continuation of civilization. Sexual intercourse, moreover, has an extraordinary power to bring about an intimate union between two people. And it is probably for these reasons that sexual union can bring such intense pleasure and joy. Yet its very power and our strong desire for this pleasure are also what arguably allow it to be so easily corrupted. When what is sought is not life-giving union, but simply the use of other as an instrument for one’s own satisfaction, sex can also become a source of dehumanizing oppression and violence. Indeed, it is this corruption that we see in the sexual abuse scandals. As we seek to discern the paths toward preventing and healing child sexual abuse, it will be crucial to understand the power of sexuality, the societal conditions that lead to its corruption, and even its relation to the difficult but often noble calling of a life of celibacy devoted to the service of others. Healing and justice for victims are paramount, though they are too rarely sought, and even more rarely achieved. More work thus needs to be done to bring justice and to bring healing. Perpetrators must face justice, but they also stand in profound need of healing and reform. The crimes they commit are an indication that something has gone terribly wrong in their hearts and minds. Healing is also needed for those who may have been alienated by the abuses that took place. Healing is needed for the communities which have been injured by abuse, and for our society’s broader attitudes toward sexuality. To begin to better understand this complex web of forces and harms, and to find the right paths forward toward healing and prevention, we are organizing a symposium on “Faith and Flourishing: Strategies for Preventing and Healing Child Sexual Abuse.” A single symposium can only go so far in addressing problems of this complexity. However, we believe that these discussions, which are too often conducted either in fearful whispers or bitter invective, would benefit from a patient, truthful, and humble discussion. We need more open sharing of stories, research, ideas, and best practices to bring better prevention and better healing. We hope that this symposium will facilitate further work on this critical topic, and will help bring healing to victims, to religious communities, and to society at large. And we hope that that healing will thereby empower religious communities, and all institutions serving children and dedicated to promoting flourishing, to better and more safely carry out their important work. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team.

An analysis explores how service attendance relates to health and well-being. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points An analysis of data from tens of thousands of people found that those who regularly attended religious services were, on average, less likely to become depressed, to smoke, or to drink heavily. Regular service attendance was also related to a lower likelihood of dying during a study's follow-up period. People who frequently attend services may benefit from higher life satisfaction, purpose in life, and other indicators of flourishing. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. Religious and spiritual traditions have, for millennia, provided practices, rituals, and communities that help people come together to make sense of life, support one another, and seek the transcendent. Given the endurance and adaptability of these communities through history, we might anticipate that they have an important role to play in promoting human flourishing. In recent decades, a growing body of rigorous longitudinal research has emerged showing just such a role. Past research, meta-analyzing longitudinal studies, has suggested an effect of religious service attendance on both greater longevity and lower psychological distress. There is also some evidence for an effect on a number of other health and well-being outcomes. However, as noted in both our earlier short-form and long-form reviews of the religious service attendance literature, the existing longitudinal evidence for other outcomes is often limited to only a few studies per outcome (and sometimes just a single study!). We need more evidence. Thus, over the past couple of years the Human Flourishing Program has undertaken what we believe to be the most comprehensive study to date on the role of religious service attendance in shaping health and well-being in the United States. We have examined 22 different health and wellbeing outcomes in three large cohorts of adults at very different life stages. The Study Our study used data from three major epidemiologic cohorts, each of which covered a different life stage. To examine the role of religious service attendance among young adults, we used recent waves of the Growing Up Today Study (9,229 participants who were on average about 23 years old at the baseline). For middle-aged adults, we used data on 68,300 participants in the Nurses' Health Study II (mean baseline age of about 47 years). And for older adults, we used a nationally representative sample of 12,549 participants from the Health and Retirement Study (about 69 years old on average at baseline). Each of these studies had several features that allowed us to adhere to the most rigorous research practices in carrying out longitudinal data analysis (which we've recently summarized in an article in JAMA Psychiatry). Each of these studies followed the participants and collected data on a number of health and well-being outcomes over time (between 3 and 12 years, depending on the outcome). The studies included data on a rich set of socio-economic, demographic, and health factors at baseline. We were thus able to control for the effects of many potential confounders, as well as of past outcomes, and past religious participation. We further used sensitivity analysis to assess how robust the associations were to potential unmeasured confounding. We looked across the various outcomes to see which of these were included in at least two of the three cohorts and we chose those as the primary outcomes for our study. We analyzed the data separately across the three cohorts and then also meta-analyzed the results of the three studies together. Even with these careful controls in place, we found strong evidence for effects of religious service attendance on a number of health and well-being outcomes. What We Found In some cases, our results closely replicated past work. For example, we found that, even after controlling for the factors above, individuals who attended religious services weekly or more were 16% less likely to become depressed, and showed a 29% reduction in smoking and 34% reduction in heavy drinking. These results match reasonably closely results from several prior studies. Somewhat strikingly, but again in line with prior analysis, weekly service attendees were 26% less likely to die during the follow-up period. However, for a number of the social and psychological outcomes, because past research from rigorous longitudinal studies was often restricted to just one or two prior papers, our present study was able to double or even triple the existing evidence base. We found evidence for modest effects of religious service attendance on reducing hopelessness, anxiety, and loneliness; slightly larger effects on increasing positive affect and life satisfaction over time; and notably larger effects on social integration (even non-religious forms) and on purpose in life. For the most part, the effect estimates looked similar across the different age groups. However, there were some exceptions. The effects on preventing depression seemed slightly larger for the young adults than for the other two age groups. Evidence for an effect on cancer likewise seemed only really to pertain to the younger adults. And the evidence for an effect of service attendance on purpose in life was stronger for middle-aged adults than for older adults. In some ways, it seemed that the psychological outcomes for older adults may have been less malleable. Such differences need to be interpreted somewhat cautiously, however, because the studies were designed in slightly different ways, measured the outcomes slightly differently, and involved differing lengths of follow-up. Nonetheless, we did not find evidence for effects on all outcomes. There was little evidence that service attendance influenced sleep duration or physical activity, the likelihood of being overweight or obese, or the chances of suffering from stroke or hypertension. Also, the overall effect estimates on cancer or heart disease were relatively modest and involved considerable uncertainty. In some of our prior work, we, in contrast, found a fairly sizeable effect on survival from cancer and heart disease, even though there was more limited evidence for effects on the incidence of these diseases. It may be that in some cases, religion and spirituality have an even more powerful role in healing and recovery than in the maintenance of health. Religion will of course not always prevent suffering and illness, but it may enable individuals to find meaning within it, and to survive and heal from it. In any case, the overall picture that emerges is that religious communities can play an important role in promoting longevity; in preventing depression; in encouraging healthy behaviors; in preventing hopelessness and loneliness; and in promoting happiness, social integration, and a sense of purpose in life. Religious communities help promote human flourishing. Acknowledging Benefits, Addressing Harms The implications of such research for public health of course need to be interpreted in a nuanced way. People do not generally become religious for health reasons. Such decisions are instead typically shaped by experiences, values, truth claims, systems of meaning, and relationships. One would not want to instrumentalize religion. However, for those who do already positively identify with a religious tradition, but do not attend services, we could envision these results as constituting an invitation back to communal religious life. The communal experience of religion clearly can powerfully shape health and well-being outcomes, and perhaps much else as well. This should be acknowledged both at the individual level and also in our thinking about the forces that shape population health. Of course, religious communities have also sometimes hindered, rather than promoted, human flourishing. The ongoing sexual abuse crisis within Christian churches is a very clear example of this. These wrongs need to be acknowledged and addressed, and just outcomes ought to be sought. Given the tremendous good religious communities can do, the wrongs done by such communities create both direct harm to the victims and also indirect harm to others by driving them away. These issues need to be taken seriously, through a collective effort to strengthen prevention efforts and enhance pathways to healing. Our next research update will take up the topic of prevention and healing in the face of sexual abuse. It will highlight a symposium we are hosting (April 8-10, 2021) to address these issues. Our keynote speaker, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Rev. Dr. Denis Mukwege, has done important work to confront these problems, and our full set of speakers across numerous professions, backgrounds, and religious traditions will help us to find the right way forward towards prevention and healing. The conference will be virtual and, registration is free. You are very welcome to attend. We hope that the conference, and the discussions it provokes, will help bring healing, empower prevention, and will better enable religious communities to carry out their important work of promoting human flourishing. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Chen, Y., Kim, E.S., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2020). Religious service attendance and subsequent health and well-being throughout adulthood: evidence from three prospective cohorts. International Journal of Epidemiology, 49:2030–2040. VanderWeele T.J. (2021) Can sophisticated study designs with regression analyses of observational data provide causal inferences? JAMA Psychiatry, 78(3):244-246.

Why distraction at work is more costly than absenteeism. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points In a survey of more than 3,000 US manufacturing employees, annual productivity loss from workplace distraction was estimated at $307 million—roughly 19 times the $16 million lost to sick days. A longitudinal meta-analysis finds that job-crafting—reshaping one's tasks, relationships, and sense of meaning at work—causally increases later work engagement. Bottom-up job-crafting and top-down managerial support are complementary; paired well, they raise engagement, reduce distraction, and promote broader flourishing. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. Work and Human Flourishing A typical full-time worker will have spent about 90,000 hours actively working by the time he or she retires. How we spend that extraordinary investment of time greatly affects our flourishing. Work affects flourishing not only because work provides the goods and services that we need to live full lives, but also because it can offer meaning, rich relationships, and opportunities to build character. Indeed, our prior literature review on pathways to flourishing identified work as one of the most important pathways to such complete well-being, and one that is both common across populations and also has important effects on numerous domains of well-being, including happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial stability. However, work can often be disagreeable; we may sometimes find that our jobs are too all-consuming, or sources of interpersonal strife, or just dull. When work is engaging it may have greater potential to contribute to an individual's flourishing than when we are unengaged, unhappy at work, or distracted. At the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, we have recently been studying both distraction and engagement at work. These are important issues — they are important to individuals and important to employers and companies as well. Fortunately, there are also evidence-based approaches to try to address some of these issues of distraction and engagement. The Cost of Distraction Most people want to be engaged at work. The time passes more quickly, and the activities seem more fun. But engaged and satisfied employees are also good for business: they are more productive, less likely to leave the company, and less likely to waste time on the job. Engagement can have a major impact on costs, revenues, and profit. In one of our recent studies with our collaborators at the SHINE program at Harvard, we examined how monetary loss due to days of illness compared to that due to distraction at work. The primary sample in the analysis involved a survey of 3,258 employees at a major US manufacturing company with annual revenue of $6 billion. In the survey, we assessed the number of sick days and, by matching with salary data, we estimated the total monetary loss due to health-related absence from work. We also assessed the percentage of time each day employees were distracted and the corresponding lost productivity. The results were striking. While there was an estimated loss of $16 million per year due to sick days, the loss due to distraction was dramatically higher and estimated to be $307 million. Results were also similar in another survey (this time of Polish factory workers) in which the cost of productivity loss due to distraction was estimated to be nearly five times higher than that due to absenteeism. Many companies devote considerable effort, often in the form of elaborate wellness programs, to reduce employee sick days. Such efforts contribute some good, but the analyses comparing sick days and distraction suggest that a more important approach might be to address issues not just of physical wellness, but of more holistic well-being, including by enhancing a sense of engagement at work. Our analyses suggest that if this could be improved, the effects on productivity and revenues could be very substantial indeed. But can we improve work engagement? This is yet another question that we have been addressing at the Human Flourishing Program. Job-Crafting and Work Engagement One approach to improving work-engagement is what is sometimes called "job-crafting." Job-crafting involves an employee reflecting upon his or her work environment and then taking actions at work to try to (i) structure one's tasks so that they can be done more effectively, or so that tedious tasks are no longer necessary, or so that more challenging or interesting tasks are available; (ii) improve one's social relationships and interactions at work; and (iii) find meaning and purpose in the work being done, often by connecting it to the mission or vision of the entire organization itself. Such job-crafting is a bottom-up approach. It can be carried out by anyone without necessarily requiring a change in the job position, or even permission from management; one simply tries to use the freedom that one does in fact have at work to make that work experience better. Executives can engage in job crafting, but so can janitors, as Barry Schwartz illustrates in his book, Practical Wisdom. Schwartz describes a group of hospital custodians who had "crafted their jobs with the central purpose of the hospital in mind … They saw themselves as playing an important role in an institution whose aim was … the care and welfare of patients." They not only took pride in their contribution to that work but allowed it to shape their routines, as when "Charlayne…refrained from vacuuming the visitors' lounge while some family members … happened to be napping." This is just one example of what might be achieved through such job-crafting practices. We've recently carried out and published a meta-analysis on job-crafting that combines the results and evidence from the most rigorous studies on the topic. While there have been a number of prior studies (and even prior meta-analyses) on job-crafting, the vast majority of these use cross-sectional data where all the variables are assessed at the same time, making it difficult to discern causal relationships. Does job-crafting increase work engagement? Or are those with higher levels of work engagement more likely to carry out job-crafting? With cross-sectional data, we cannot tell. Our study and meta-analysis restricted attention to only longitudinal studies that collected data at two or more time-points so that we could look at how job-crafting earlier in time might affect work engagement later in time. Even when restricting to these more rigorous studies, we found evidence for an important effect of job-crafting on improving work engagement. Thinking about meaning, and one's relationships, and one's tasks in the workplace context appears to be an effective way to improve work engagement. Such job crafting can of course be done informally simply by reflecting on the nature of one's work and work relationships. However, Wrzesniewski and Dutton, the researchers who provided the original theoretical framework for job crafting, have also developed a workbook to assist in the process. And we've also provided a tool for job-crafting in our own flourishing app that we described in an earlier research posting. Such tools could be promoted in workplace settings to encourage job crafting, which would not only enhance work engagement (and thereby reduce revenue-draining distraction) but would also potentially offer employees improved relationships and a deeper sense of meaning and mission in life. Improving Well-Being in the Workplace Greater purpose and better relationships are of course not only a means to greater job engagement (and job satisfaction and productivity), but they are ends sought for their own sake. Managers paying attention to these matters as important ends for employees would constitute an important shift towards holistic care for employee well-being. Job-crafting itself is a bottom-up approach. But of course, work environments matter too. Managers are able to not only encourage and provide opportunities for such job-crafting practices, but can also try to offer employees more discretion about the structure of their work, so as to provide broader scope for job crafting and a greater sense of autonomy, mastery, and control. Managers can also host events that empower camaraderie and relationships among employees, and can emphasize the organization's mission and the goods it seeks to contribute to society. Bottom-up and top-down approaches to promoting employee engagement thus need not be in conflict; they can be complementary. By uniting them, managers and employees can help ensure that work enhances the dignity of each person by allowing all workers to express their uniqueness in a way that contributes to the common good. If managers paired job crafting with genuine concern for their employees, they could enhance workplace well-being, increase productivity, reduce distraction, and lead the way to greater flourishing for all. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Frederick, D.E. and VanderWeele, T.J. (2020). Longitudinal meta-analysis of job crafting shows positive association with work engagement. Cogent Psychology, 7:1, 1746733. Bialowolski, P., McNeely, E., VanderWeele, T.J., and Weziak-Bialowolska, D. (2020). Ill health and distraction at work: costs and drivers for productivity loss. PLoS One, 15(3):e0230562.

Possibilities for good amidst life's many challenges. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Key points Hope differs from optimism: it does not presume a good future, but focuses on the possibility of a difficult but attainable future good and gives reason for action. In a longitudinal study of ~13,000 older adults, higher hope was associated with 16 percent lower four-year mortality risk and gains in life satisfaction, happiness, purpose, and mastery. Dominant psychological scales may not capture hope as people actually understand it; the Human Flourishing Program is developing measures grounded in Aquinas's conception of hope. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. This past year has been difficult for our country and for the world. We have been struggling through a deadly pandemic. We have faced tensions across racial and political lines. Many have faced tremendous economic hardship. Some are doubtless wondering if there is any reason for hope. Dare we hope for the future? And what is hope? Is it realistic? Does it help at all? Over the past couple of years, we have been trying to better understand and assess hope at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard to attempt to shed light on some of these critical questions of our day. The Nature of Hope A recent report from the John Templeton Foundation on hope and optimism, authored by philosopher Michael Milona, provides a helpful summary of some of the important empirical, philosophical, and theological insights into hope. Hope differs from optimism in not necessarily presuming or expecting that the future will be good, but focusing on the possibility that it will be good nonetheless. Hope entails a desire for something good in the future and a belief that this is possible. But hope is more than just belief and desire. Thomas Aquinas proposed that hope is a desire for some good that arises out of the perception that this future good is difficult, but not impossible, to obtain. In Michael Milona's account, hope extends beyond belief and desire to include a reason for action to try to obtain the future good. Hope fixes one's attention on the possibility that the future will be good, and empowers one to act, or to wait, to receive that good, even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainty. Milona discusses how it may sometimes seem that there are dangers in hoping, such as complacency, or an unrealistic set of expectations, or an otherworldliness that may not be conducive to appropriate action or to flourishing. However, he also notes that hope need not necessarily result in such things. One can have a realistic assessment of the situation, and of the difficulties and uncertainties, and yet still hope. And such hope can sometimes be the motivation for action. Nevertheless, given these potential objections, we might reasonably wonder whether hope really contributes to human well-being. This is a question we have been examining empirically at the Human Flourishing Program. Our Study and the Effects of Hope We have recently published a paper on the effects of hope on health and well-being. This study used data from about 13,000 older adult participants in the Health and Retirement Study and employed methodology similar to our recent paper on volunteering. We used longitudinal data, which ensures that a prospective cause actually precedes its potential effects, and analyzed the effect of hope on a wide range of outcomes (which also reduces the dangers of selective reporting and publication bias). We further controlled for baseline levels of hope and baseline levels of outcomes, along with a rich set of demographic, physical, and psychological factors, and used "sensitivity analysis" to assess how robust the associations we identified were to unmeasured confounding. These approaches allow us to at least provide evidence about potential causal effects of hope on many aspects of wellbeing. What we found was that having high levels of hope led to slightly decreased (16 percent lower) mortality risk during the four years of follow-up as well as fewer subsequent chronic health conditions. It also led to lower levels of depression, negative affect, and loneliness; notably higher life satisfaction, happiness, purpose in life, and sense of mastery; and perhaps somewhat greater physical activity. We did not, however, find evidence for an effect on all outcomes. Interestingly, we found little or no evidence for an association of hope with reduced subsequent smoking or binge drinking, and no evidence for effects on conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or arthritis. Even the important associations with subsequently lower four-year mortality risk are smaller than analogous associations for volunteering or for religious service attendance. However, our study did not uncover any detrimental effects of hope and it did provide evidence that it has important effects on many health and well-being outcomes. The evidence from our study, looking at many different outcomes, certainly does suggest that the effects of hope, at least on average, are notably beneficial. Measurement of Hope and Optimism This study (of the effects of hope on health and well-being) was not without its limitations, particularly related to challenges in measuring hope. The measure of hope we used in the Health and Retirement Study in fact employed a series of statements about hopelessness; the study assessed participants' hopefulness by the extent to which they rejected these statements. But might we measure hope in a more satisfactory way? The dominant model for hope measurement in much psychological research is Charles Snyder's approach of assessing a person's sense of pathways to a desired outcome and of agency to make use of those pathways. But this approach has been criticized (including in Milona's report) for failing to capture hope as most people seem to understand it and of missing the possibility of hoping against the odds. As noted above, hope does not necessarily entail expectation of the desired outcome, and hope characteristically is operative in the face of difficulties. Items in Snyder's scale such as "I've been pretty successful in life" do not seem to capture hope at all. In his report, Michael Milona expressed the need for more philosophically grounded measures of hope for empirical research. Recognizing this need, for the past two years we at the Human Flourishing Program have been working to develop more conceptually adequate measures of hope and optimism in collaboration with several of our colleagues at Harvard's Center for Happiness and Health, along with philosopher Nancy Snow at the University of Oklahoma and theologian Edward Brooks at the University of Oxford. Our items and questions concerning hope are grounded in Aquinas' conception of hope as pertaining to a difficult but possible future good, while our items concerning optimism distinguish between "groundless optimism" in which the expectation of future good is without any reasonable basis and is thus irrational (a criticism of optimism often rightly raised by philosophers) from "grounded" optimism that might be based on one's resources or one's willingness to exert effort. In this work, we've both been trying to develop better measures and also to better distinguish hope from optimism with the aim of better understanding the effects of hope and optimism on human well-being. We have begun some cognitive testing and data collection on the hope items, but if any of our readers are interested in assisting with more substantial data collection efforts on our hope or optimism measures (or both), please feel free to contact us. We will be releasing these publicly once we have better information on their performance in cognitive testing and on their psychometric properties. Hope for the New Year and Beyond But research is one thing. Realistically confronting the world we live in today is another. Can we truly hope today? As COVID case rates soar and much of our social fabric seems to be fraying, despair might seem the most reasonable response. The vaccine trials appear to be promising, but this is occurring in the midst of daily COVID mortality reaching all-time highs. Efforts are needed to bring this pandemic to an end and to restore life. We need hope; we need to focus on the future difficult but possible good; we need reasons for action amidst the challenges. We will also need rebuilding and reinforcing of society and civilization and of those areas of social and cultural life that have deteriorated, declined, or been destroyed. We need hope. We should, moreover, also clarify what our hopes are and what we truly value. The pandemic has often led to a conflict of numerous competing values and ends. We need clarity on what matters most. We need to see clearly what we, as individuals, and as a society, value and what we hope for. What is it that we want, and hope, for our world? During this upcoming holiday and Christmas season, those within the Christian tradition also share a deeper and more longstanding hope, a hope mysteriously grounded in the birth of Jesus Christ and all that followed from his life. It is a hope for a more final and powerful restoration to the good. Properly understood, it is not a hope that deters one from acting here and now, but one that gives reasons for such action – so as to bring about a better world. It is a hope that is made manifest, with its end ultimately attained, in love – a love that we are to show one another. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References Long, K.N.G., Kim, E.S., Chen, Y., Wilson, M.F., Worthington, E.L., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2020). "The role of hope in subsequent health and well-being for older adults: an outcome-wide longitudinal approach." Global Epidemiology, 2:100018.

Orienting oneself towards the good. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. Our last research update described how Americans’ flourishing has declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, not least because of the burdens placed this year on our collective physical and financial health. But flourishing is a matter of internal perspective as well as external circumstance: Even those who haven’t gotten sick or lost a job have been confronted with an extraordinary array of temptations to slip into regretful or anxious rumination about milestones missed or dangers looming on the horizon. Because the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard is focused not only on assessing and measuring human well-being, but also on promoting individual and communal well-being in practice, we have recently published a summary of easy-to-complete do-it-yourself activities that can enhance flourishing. The review focuses on activities with well-documented positive effects on multiple aspects of human flourishing. While most prior literature reviews of flourishing activities have been oriented principally toward academics, this recent summary is meant to be accessible to those without a research background, while still relying on the strongest evidence. Flourishing Activities and Seeking the Good The paper is organized around four different approaches to enhancing one’s flourishing. These include learning to attend to the good in one’s own life, actively seeking and promoting the good, finding and experiencing the good in community, and addressing psychological distress that hinders one from experiencing what is good. For each of these broad approaches, we discuss three activities that have been shown to promote them: three cognitive activities, three behavioral activities, three forms of community engagement, and three tools to address psychological distress. The various activities are also summarized on our website, and we have provided an implementation in the app described below. For example, one of the most widely studied well-being activities involves gratitude exercises. One might, for instance, try writing down three things one is grateful for three times a week over the course of a month or two, or even longer. Evidence from numerous randomized trials (thoroughly analyzed in this meta-analysis) suggests that this simple activity of focusing the mind on what is good in one’s past or present can help increase happiness, relieve symptoms of depression, and perhaps even improve sleep. I personally try to practice these gratitude exercises regularly, both on my own and with my family, and have noticed a marked improvement in our life together when we do so. I have also described these gratitude exercises at student events and have had students return months later saying that they were very helpful in getting through difficult times. These exercises are certainly not going to solve all of one’s problems, but it can be very helpful to remember what one is grateful for, perhaps especially when every new headline seems to offer further reasons for discouragement or anger. Even amid great challenges, there are important goods in our lives, which we sometimes take for granted; we need to pause, and see them, and rest in them. You can enhance your flourishing not only by changing how you think, but also by changing how you act. One example discussed in the review is carrying out regular acts of kindness, which a number of studies have shown to have significant effects on well-being. The idea here is to pick, say, one day each week and, on that day, try to perform five acts of kindness towards others that one would not otherwise ordinarily do. It can take considerable planning in advance to carry out five in a single day. But the planning itself and the deliberate intention to do good for others can also have important effects on one’s own well-being, improving happiness and positive emotions. By carrying out such acts of kindness, we can, over time, develop a disposition towards seeking the good of others, which is one of the central components of love. Moreover, there is now also evidence that such acts of kindness often encourage others to carry out similar altruistic acts, inspiring further acts of kindness in turn. This is a simple activity, but if practiced by an individual, or by a community, or by our world, the consequences could be profound. These are just a couple of the activities described in the paper. Others include imagining and reflecting on one’s best possible self, savoring positive experiences, making use of one’s character strengths, and volunteering (as described in one of our previous research updates). Many of these activities for flourishing have been studied in the positive psychology literature and have been found (again, in randomized trials) to have important effects on happiness and life satisfaction, and also on mental, and perhaps even physical, health. The paper also discusses cognitive-behavioral resources in the form of self-help guides that can be useful in addressing more mild forms of depression or anxiety and forgiveness workbooks that can be helpful in addressing persistent anger and resentment that can sometimes be difficult to deal with. However, to enhance flourishing in other domains, such as increasing one’s sense of meaning and purpose, improving one’s character, or deepening one’s relationships, more will often be needed than simple individual activities. For full flourishing, we need engagement in communities, whether at home, at work, at church, or elsewhere. Given that, the paper also describes activities shown to enhance engagement and well-being in each of these contexts. These activities are, of course, in no way exhaustive, but they are representative of what individuals and communities can easily do to help enhance flourishing, and how we can orient our minds and actions and communities and relationships towards what is good. Flourishing App In order to promote these activities for flourishing, we have been working with partners to develop “flourishing apps,” both free versions, and also more targeted commercial versions for workplace settings and beyond.First, we have been working with Program affiliate (and our inaugural post-doctoral fellow), Donald Frederick, on the development of a web app that is both desktop and mobile friendly to facilitate engagement in these flourishing activities and to more easily allow for the tracking of flourishing scores over time. Each of the activities described in the paper is implemented in the app, which also incorporates a number of other well-being measures. To use the app, please visit https://flourishing.app. Although these resources are still being refined, we thought that they were far enough along in development that they were ready to be shared. For purposes of bug reports and questions e-mail: flourishingapp@gmail.com. We will also be releasing a downloadable mobile app in the next few months. You can follow updates to the apps at https://flourishing.app/updates. We will continue to update and expand the features of these freely available resources. We have also been working with a new company called Flerish to promote flourishing assessments and well-being enhancement in the workplace and elsewhere using their newly developed YOU app. The app makes use of our flourishing measure, but also connects this with wellness coaching, curated content, and an accountability network. It can be used individually or throughout a team or company, and more information about these possibilities can be found by contacting Flerish. We hope that these various digital resources will likewise promote further flourishing self-assessment and reflection and activities conducive to flourishing. Promoting Flourishing During COVID-19 Some of the activities described above might be helpful in addressing the declines in wellbeing and also the altered opportunities for flourishing amidst the pandemic. But more is needed. Reform and improvement of mental health systems are required. Economic conditions that lead to opportunities for all to flourish are needed. And we need national and worldwide cooperation in battling this pandemic, and in being better prepared for the future. To that end, we, along with a number of our affiliates and friends, have been working with The Lancet’s recently-formed COVID-19 Commission Taskforce on Mental Health and Well-being to try to address some of these challenges and to promote flourishing amidst the pandemic, and a better future thereafter. We will of course continue to keep you updated as our various research and well-being promotion activities develop. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References VanderWeele, T.J. (2020). Activities for flourishing: an evidence-based guide. Journal of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing, 4:79-91.

The toll of COVID-19 on flourishing. By Tyler J. VanderWeele Ph.D. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. The Covid-19 pandemic has altered daily life in countless ways, with potentially dire implications for well-being. From struggles with finding childcare or learning to work from home, to the toll taken on one’s health by social isolation, or on one’s finances by unemployment, the effects have been profound, and their combinations across individuals and institutions seemingly endless. At the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, we have been trying to study and understand, empirically and quantitatively, how various domains of flourishing have changed during the pandemic. The results of this research are available in a newly published study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The Pandemic and Well-Being in the Nation This study used our flourishing measure across six domains of human life: happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material security. Data were collected on a national sample of individuals representative of the United States on geographic region, age, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and religious self-identification with 1,010 individuals in January of 2020 (prior to the World Health Organization declaration of the pandemic) and a similar sample of 3,020 individuals in June of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. Each of the six domains of flourishing was assessed using two questions from our flourishing measure. Unsurprisingly, flourishing in general has declined. Interestingly, however, different domains of flourishing have been affected in different ways. And some domains of flourishing have gone down a lot more than others. On a scale from zero to ten, physical and mental health have gone down by seven-tenths of a point (from 6.9 to 6.2), as have happiness and life satisfaction (down from 7.1 to 6.4). The largest decline was for financial and material stability which went down nearly an entire point (down from 5.7 to 4.8), reflecting the profound effects the pandemic has had on the economy. These are large declines. In statistical terms, they are about a third of a standard deviation, meaning that they reflect a fall for the average American from the 50th percentile to the 37th percentile of the original flourishing distribution. Again, and unsurprisingly: the pandemic has been bad for well-being. However, some other domains of flourishing have not, on average, been as severely affected. The changes in meaning and purpose, or in character, or even in social relationships were much more modest. With self-report assessments of social relationships, the change was less than two-tenths of a point (a modest decline from 6.9 to 6.7). We were somewhat surprised by this, given the various restrictions on social interaction at present. One of the other important and interesting aspects of the data, however, is that the variance of the responses increased across all the flourishing domains. Individual experiences in each flourishing domain are more variable and wide-ranging now than they were prior to the pandemic. So while social relationship scores have gone down on average only slightly, this is true in part because significant declines in this area for some (perhaps especially those living alone) have been partially offset by modest gains for others. For some, that is, the pandemic may have in fact allowed for greater investment in family, or housemates, or existing relationships. Some research, for example, suggests that fathers’ relationships with their children have been especially strengthened. Flourishing in each of these domains has gone down for many, but individual experiences have been highly variable. Nevertheless, the national means in each domain do make clear where we as a nation, on average, are in need of the most help. The January data from the study we just released is also interesting, because it provides our first national benchmarking data across the flourishing domains (with national mean scores of about 7 in each of the domains, except for financial and material security, which was about 6). This data will also allow us to assess when well-being has eventually returned to its pre-pandemic levels. Moreover, if our Global Flourishing Study is indeed eventually funded, we would in the future be able to carry out similar types of analyses in 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries representing 72% of the world’s population. Flourishing Amidst Coronavirus When we published our earlier posting in March on Flourishing Amidst Coronavirus, we acknowledged that losses with regard to health and financial well-being were likely to be especially severe. However, we also suggested various ways in which other aspects of flourishing including meaning, and character, and relationships could be maintained, and even improved, amidst the challenges presented by the pandemic. In many ways, the course of the pandemic has vindicated these predictions. Health and financial well-being have substantially declined, while meaning, relationships, and character have seen much more modest drops. There have indeed been ways to sustain these other aspects of flourishing. The happiness and life satisfaction domain in many ways reflects composite changes in numerous aspects of a person’s life. While we suggested that there were practices for trying to sustain happiness amidst the pandemic as well, the decline in mental and physical health and in financial security seem to have profoundly affected happiness as well. In our next research posting, we will go into greater detail on some of our work on activities to enhance flourishing and on some of our current efforts to promote flourishing activities in practice. Clearly well-being has declined in numerous domains, and public health and policy efforts are unquestionably needed to contain and end the pandemic. But individuals can make efforts to enhance their own flourishing, and that of others as well, even in the midst of the present challenges. On a more personal note, my own family’s life and flourishing has been affected in many ways that mirror the national well-being data. We are less happy, and have had greater concerns over physical and mental health. Our sense of meaning and purpose and character have been challenged, but there have also been opportunities for growth; with regard to social relationships, while there have been real losses with friendship and community, we have also experienced a deeper investment in both immediate family and extended family. Again, in many ways, this seems to reflect the changes on average in the nation. The one clear exception for my family to the broad changes reflected in this study has been our relative financial security. Indeed, this is the domain where changes, variability, and inequalities have likely been the greatest. In our data, it is the domain that has the very highest variance. Individual experiences have varied dramatically. Indeed, there is some indication that relatively well-off individuals in fact now have greater savings, since there are fewer opportunities for spending, while others have had their already modest savings entirely depleted. Nonetheless, this challenging development represents an opportunity for those who have been less affected financially by the pandemic to help support individuals and institutions who have been more adversely affected. Indeed, that opportunity might even be considered by some to be an obligation; in his recent encyclical on human solidarity, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis quotes the fourth-century bishop St. John Chrysostom’s striking warning, “Not to share our wealth with the poor is to rob them and take away their livelihood.” Many people in one’s day to day life may be in need and can be helped directly; there are also countless charitable organizations carrying out excellent work to help as well, both in this country and abroad. Donations can likewise be made to cultural and educational institutions that have been adversely affected and cannot carry out their ordinary activities to sustain their life into the future. Generous contributions to individuals and institutions in need can help to shore up societal flourishing and promote the common good, even in the present challenging circumstances. Moreover, there is good evidence that charitable giving contributes not only to the well-being of others but to one’s own well-being too (this will be the subject of a future research update). Today, however, we need to do everything we can as a society, and as individuals, to preserve well-being from declining further, and to restore the losses already present during the pandemic. Receive Tyler's monthly insight and research updates from the Human Flourishing Program team. References VanderWeele, T.J., Fulks, J., Plake, J.F., and Lee, M.T. (2020). National well-being measures before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in online samples. Journal of General Internal Medicine.