An outline of the theories, definitions, and operationalizations of well-being and flourishing throughout the history of positive psychology.
Since the dawn of the branch of positive psychology, psychologists have been theorizing definitions and operationalizations of human well-being or "flourishing" as it later became known. This review discusses seven distinguished measurements of well-being and flourishing, examining how they differ and what they have in common.
At a glance, what is the whole history of "flourishing" as a field of study? What is the history of its progress?
Put simply: well-being is often regarded as the end goal and outcome of virtually all humanistic altruism.
80000 Hours defines social impact as:
"Social impact" or "making a difference" is (tentatively) about promoting total expected wellbeing — considered impartially, over the long term — without sacrificing anything that might be of comparable moral importance.
So the goal of many EAs is to promote wellbeing.
Further down that article, they also say:
Why "wellbeing"? We understand wellbeing as an inclusive notion, meaning anything that makes people better off. We take this to encompass at least promoting happiness, health, and the ability for people to live the life they want. [...] What wellbeing consists of more precisely is a controversial question [...]
They choose to take a philosophical approach to understanding wellbeing. But if there's a field of science that is actively trying to participate in defining "what wellbeing consists of more precisely", then we should pay attention and maybe even help out. (I believe this field of positive psychology could use a lot of help.)
All names listed here are only useful in aiding our learning and our memories. The reality is that no single individual is solely responsible for the ideas and breakthroughs mentioned here. Every person collaborates with a team. (And every team builds upon/from the entire history of our civilization.) Please assume that there is an "et al" (Latin for "and others") written next to everyone's names here. I just didn't want to write that everywhere because it looks awful and is equally awful for readability (because no one says "et al" or other Latin phrases in day-to-day conversation). There are several people not mentioned by name here who deserve just as much credit, celebration, and praise for their contributions.
In 1943, Maslow wrote a paper, "a theory of Human Motivation", that outlined well-being according to his ideas of intrinsic behavioral motivations and his breakdown of human needs in a "hierarchy".
According to his definitions, self-actualization is:
In his later years, Maslow explored the concept of "transcendence" (or "self-transcendence") while criticizing his original vision of self-actualization. He defines transcendence as:
Due to its lack of a solid scientific basis, Maslow's theory is widely criticized and heavily contested in academia. Most criticisms are directed towards the methodology and the hierarchy. But the concepts of needs, motivations, well-being, and self-actualization are generally accepted as having some merit. Unfortunately, this theory related to well-being is not an operationalization and thus lacks clear measurements.
Maslow came up with his theory while studying monkeys and their patterns of behavior that addressed priorities based on individual needs (given the presence or absence of particular things that satiate and fulfill different needs, such as water or food). Thus he defined his notion of "deficit needs", and from there he then extended this concept to humans where he came up with the idea of "being needs." How exactly he arrived at his complete theory for humans is still a bit unclear. For example, some indigenous academics argue that he may have been influenced by the teachings and philosophy of the Blackfeet tribe, where he spent several weeks doing fieldwork in 1938. Others suggest he based this on what he called "the master race of people", such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people. Maslow often narrowed the focus of his studies on the healthiest 1% of the college student population as well. Therefore, it is possible that the basis of this theory is biased in a few notable ways.
Abraham Maslow may have popularized the idea that:
In 1989 Ryff developed a model/theory that determined that six key elements contribute to an individual's psychological well-being, contentment, and happiness.
She created an accompanying psychometric inventory called The Ryff Scale of Measurement. The questionnaire asks respondents to rate statements on a likert scale of 1 to 6, where 1 indicates strong disagreement and 6 indicates strong agreement. Higher scores indicate higher psychological well-being. Normally this self-assessment either has 54 items (9 per factor) or 84 items (14 per factor). Here is one example for each factor:
Ryff based her theory on the principles of "Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics", "where the goal of life isn't feeling good, but is instead about living virtuously." A key foundation of her model is the principle that "a good life is balanced and whole" (across multidimensional aspects of well-being). She drew inspiration from the concept of eudaimonia and virtue ethics from the Ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle. She was drawn to join the philosophical questions about the meaning of a good life with a scientific, empirical psychological theory — to bridge philosophy and psychology while also ensuring empirical rigor and testability. She noted Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Jung as all being a part of the diverse selection of her influences.
(Unfortunately, outside of her principled premises from virtue ethics, nicomachean ethics, and concepts of eudaimonia and her collection of influences from famed philosophers and psychologists, she did not further outline her choices of criteria for her model, such as establishing a systematic methodology.)
Carol Ryff may have pioneered the idea that:
Keyes is considered to have coined the term "flourishing", introducing and developing the concept in positive psychology. He collaborated with Carol Ryff in testing her Six-factor Model of Psychological Well-being, and in 2002 he published his theory of flourishing, which included a breakdown of well-being.
Keyes used self-report measures to create diagnostic criteria for flourishing. For each of the three dimensions of well-being, the person has to score highly (in the upper tertile) on the majority of the scales:
Keyes "operationalized symptoms of positive feelings and positive functioning in life by reviewing dimensions and scales of subjective well-being." When coining the term "flourishing", he wanted to create a term that represented "the epitome of mentally healthy adults." (He also coined the term "languishing" to contrast "flourishing".) Much of Keyes' work focused on studying the "functioning" of adults.
(Unfortunately, further details on his approach on defining his theory and its criteria are unclear or unavailable/inaccessible.)
Corey Keyes may have pioneered the idea that:
Diener is attributed for coining the expression "subjective well-being" (or SWB), and due to his expansive work on the topic, he's even been given the nickname "Dr. Happiness". In 2010, Diener created a measure of subjective well-being to assess psychological flourishing. The Flourishing Scale is a brief 8-item summary measure of the respondent's self-perceived success in important areas of life. It was designed to measure social-psychological prosperity and to complement existing measures of subjective well-being.
Each of the eight items is measured with a self-assessment rating of a statement on a likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Thus the brief scale assesses major aspects of social-psychological functioning from the respondent's own point of view. ("High scores signify that respondents view themselves in positive terms in important areas of functioning.")
Diener based his measurement "on recent theories of psychological and social well-being" as a means "to complement existing measures of subjective well-being."
"In recent years a number of psychological theories of human flourishing have been developed, and we devised a brief measure to capture major aspects of this."
(Unfortunately, beyond this general approach and collection of influences, there is little more documentation on his choices of criteria for his breakdown.)
Ed Diener may have pioneered the idea that
In 2013 Huppert introduced her paper on "a New Conceptual Framework for Defining Well-Being" with a nod to Ryff and Keyes' work, saying:
"Flourishing refers to the experience of life going well. It is a combination of feeling good and functioning effectively. Flourishing is synonymous with a high level of mental well-being, and it epitomizes mental health."
She went further to claim that well-being is "at the opposite end of a spectrum to the common mental disorders". Thus she examined "internationally agreed criteria for depression and anxiety" to define "the opposite of each symptom" and thereby "identify ten features of positive well-being." Based on psychometric analysis of these indicators, she proposed an operational definition of flourishing by outlining a new multi-dimensional subjective well-being measure.
For each of the 10 features of flourishing, Huppert chose an item from the European Social Survey (ESS) for use as an indicator in their subjective well-being measure.
At the end of her paper, Huppert concludes her discussion by stating that "efforts to create multi-item, multi-dimensional measures of the features of flourishing are currently underway" (and she makes direct reference to her colleague: Seligman).
Huppert chose each of the ten dimensions in her measure based on defining the opposite of ten standard measures of depression and anxiety. She believed wellbeing is a spectrum between flourishing and depression (along with other states of being associated with mental disorders).
She also made conscious efforts to choose internationally agreed upon criteria to provide a solid platform for her theory and well-being measure.
(Note: When I originally wrote this, I drafted the first copy in early 2020. Since then, Felicia Huppert has continued her research and published new journal articles, including a paper on a new framework, discussed below.)
In 2020, Huppert and colleagues created a new "theoretically-based multidimensional measure of well-being to advance theory, research and policy-practice" called The Well-Being Profile (WB-Pro). This measure comes in 3 sizes: "Long" (48 items), "Medium" (15 items), and "Short" (5 items).
WB-Pro 15 (Medium)
WB-Pro 5 (Short)
Later, in 2021, Huppert co-authored a book entitled Creating The World We Want To Live In: How Positive Psychology Can Build a Brighter Future. This group of authors, called The Positive World Collective, developed their own model, called The Wellbeing Framework. This framework outlines 5 "principles for psychological wellbeing" underpinned by 3 "core capabilities" which promote "wise action". Altogether the authors claim, "The psychological principles for wellbeing and the core capabilities can help us as individuals and societies to flourish even in complex times."
Principles for psychological wellbeing (the absence of any is "actively detrimental")
Core capabilities ("characteristics and skills that can be learned")
Wise action - "understanding the complexity of a situation and choosing to do what yields the greatest long-term benefit for us and others"
Unfortunately, this framework does not come with a corresponding measurement.
Felicia A. Huppert may have pioneered the idea that:
Seligman is known as the "father" of positive psychology, as he made that the focus of his presidency of the American Psychological Association in 1998. He's also the Director of the Positive Psychology Center and a Professor of Psychology at UPenn, where he also established the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program. He is also well-known as the co-author (with Christopher Peterson) of Character Strengths and Virtues (2004). Later in 2011, he published a book, Flourish, which established the PERMA Theory of Well-Being. The pneumonic PERMA stands for 5 different elements of flourishing.
Seligman's colleagues, Julie Butler and Margaret Kern, created a "PERMA Profiler" to help individuals measure each of these elements to get a multi-factored overview of their well-being. It is a subjective self-assessment questionnaire. Each of the questions attempt to evaluate the presence of "real things" in the person's life.
According to Seligman's framework, each element must meet these three criteria:
(The keywords beginning with the letter "i" are my own addition as a helpful mnemonic device and are not from Seligman.)
(Unfortunately, it seems there was not a systematic approach in selecting a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list, even given this criteria.)
Martin Seligman may have pioneered the idea that:
VanderWeele was a Professor of Epidemiology, the Director of the Human Flourishing Program, and the Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality at Harvard University. His definitions of flourishing were: "complete human well-being'' or "a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good". In his 2017 paper, On the Promotion of Human Flourishing, VanderWeele proposed a theoretical model of flourishing that consists of 5 domains, claiming that each of these dimensions "is nearly universally desired, and each constitutes an end in and of itself." (He included a separate, different 6th domain as well, which is described below.)
* VanderWeele added that sixth factor as a separate category. He recognized that it's not an end in itself, yet he also saw that it is crucial to sustaining the other 5 domains in the long-term.
The "Flourish" measure consists of two questions or items from each of the domains. Each of the questions is assessed on a scale of 0 - 10. The flourishing index score is obtained by summing the scores from each of the ten questions and results in a total score.
In his paper, VanderWeele began by drawing upon the progress of his peers in positive psychology as the foundation for one of the four semantic categories he outlined for his 6 domains: psychological well-being. He proposed adding the category of virtue on a somewhat philosophical basis ("in the philosophical literature, arguments have been put forward that virtue is a central component of flourishing"), the category of health as "arguably central to a person's sense of wholeness and well-being", and the category of stability as being a predictor of sustaining flourishing over time into the future.
"If some notion of flourishing is ultimately of interest, then health itself, along with psychological well-being, and virtue, would all seem to be central components.
Flourishing itself might be understood as a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good. We might also refer to such a state as complete human well-being, which is again arguably a broader concept than psychological well-being."
As for his criteria for the theory overall, he summarized the purpose of his outline in saying:
"This is arguably what we are after as individuals and should be after as a society."
"Each of these domains arguably also satisfies the following two criteria: (i) Each domain is generally viewed as an end in itself, and (ii) each domain is nearly universally desired. I would suggest that these two criteria—of being ends and being universally desired—may be useful guides in decisions concerning the domains that should be included in national surveys and polls to assess flourishing."
(Thus, I believe he was trying to state that each domain individually and all the domains collectively represent something akin to "universal intrinsic values".)
(Unfortunately, as with Seligman's theory, it seems there was not a systematic approach used in selecting a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list, even given this criteria.)
Tyler J. VanderWeele may have pioneered the idea that:
Thus far, what does this progression of contributions amount to?
The contributions of these psychologists have also had a significant collective impact on the direction of their scientific field itself, shaping ideas on what scientists in the field of psychology should focus on.
When examining the elements, factors, and dimensions of flourishing according to each theory, there are some notable overlaps and some distinctly unique items.
What might we predict the future of this branch of science to look like? Where is positive psychology headed? What's next in the developments of theories of well-being and flourishing?
Is there a "standardization" problem, where we have many competing standards but no clear consensus? (See the xkcd comic on standards)
Can we actually create a model of multidimensional well-being wherein all the domains are mutually exclusive and the holistic framework is collectively exhaustive?
Can we establish a scientific, systematic foundational basis for an operationalization/theory of flourishing that is designed to avoid human error, noise, and bias?
What can we learn about the comparisons of these theories?
Would it seem safe to say that our only observable consensus thus far in the research of flourishing is that "the good life" requires good relationships and meaning?
Can we go further into the details of both relationships and meaning?
Could we further define what comprises a "good" relationship?
Could we arrive at a consensus on a definition of what "meaning" actually is?
What do you think about these past 100 years of developing theories of flourishing/well-being?
What might progress look like in the next 100 years?
Personal acknowledgement: The inclusion and exclusion of theories, principles, frameworks, and ideas will invariably be influenced by my own biases. What I chose to highlight is certainly biased in some ways. I cannot deny the fact that I have opinions about each of these theories and measurements. I'm personally invested in the topic, because I have chosen it to be central to my life's major aspirations.
While I tried to remain as detached from the information provided here as possible, I recognize that that is impossible to avoid, considering my motivations. That is why I need your help to review my review.
Please provide feedback, critiques, and criticisms. My goal is for this to be a reliable educational resource and reference. Thus, the more I am personally removed from it, the better.
Here are three ways I'm hoping you could help:
Shout out to Jarred, Debbie, Sam, Jen, Holly, and Johnson for helping me and reviewing the drafts!
This is a cross-post from the same article on my site. (Feel free to read it delicious dark mode there.)