3 Basic Ingredients of Human Flourishing
Posted on August 10th, 2008 in Positive Actions, Positive Emotions, Positive Meaning |
Note: For an update to this post, read Human Flourishing = Pleasure + Self Actualization + Flow
Research from positive psychology suggests that a combination of three components leads to human flourishing: (1) positive emotions, (2) positive actions, and (3) positive meaning 1.
1. Positive Emotions
This component is also referred to as the pleasant life. It’s about maximizing pleasure while minimizing pain. Positive emotions can be about the past (gratitude), present (savoring), or future (hope).
Attempting to increase positive emotion as much as possible is not just shallow hedonism. For example, the Broaden and Build Theory stipulates that positive emotions lead to long-term individual growth because they build people’s personal and social resources 2. The increase of resources in turn, leads to more positive emotions. In essence, there is an upward spiral of continuous growth.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a preset limit on how far we can exploit this positive-emotion-fueled growth; up to 50% of your level of happiness may be determined by your genes 3.
Still, it may be worthwhile to maximize positive emotions because that leaves a full 50% that is not genetically determined. And as previously stated, positive emotions lead to long-term benefits which may also increase opportunities for enhancing the other two components of human flourishing: positive actions, and positive meaning.
2. Positive Actions
This component is also referred to as the good life. It’s about doing activities that result in flow: a psychological state in which people are fully engaged in an intrinsically enjoyable and challenging activity 4.
People engage in flow producing activities just for the activity’s sake; not for external rewards like money or social acceptance. Just engaging in the activity is rewarding enough.
However, a person will not necessarily feel positive emotions while immersed in a flow inducing activity. For example, an artist will probably not feel joy as he struggles to find just the right shade of red. Instead, he might actually feel the negative emotion of frustration. Nonetheless, after completing his newest work of art, he will probably say that painting it was fun.
Furthermore, different people will intrinsically enjoy different activities. That’s because flow producing activities require people to use their unique strengths 5. For example, a person with the strength of creativity will probably enjoy creating art, whereas a person with the strength of social intelligence will probably enjoy meeting new people.
That means that people should understand their specific strengths and then, as much as possible, engage in activities that utilize those strengths.
3. Positive Meaning
This component is also referred to as the meaningful life. It’s about using your unique strengths in service of something “larger than yourself” 1. When you exploit your specific talents and skills to pursue goals that service the greater good, you add meaning to your life.
For example, Al Gore uses his talent as a public speaker to increase awareness about and drive solutions for solving the climate change crisis.
Final Thoughts
In this post I’ve highlighted how research from positive psychology points to three three basic ingredients that lead to human flourishing: (1) the pleasant life, (2) the good life, and (3) the meaningful life. For the sake of clarity, each component was only explained in general terms. In future posts, I’ll attempt to fully explain each component with specific details.
If you have any questions, thoughts, or criticism, feel free to fire away in the comments!
Note on diagram: Although the diagram at the top suggests a clockwise direction in which positive meaning influences positive emotions which influence positive actions, a counter-clockwise direction is also possible. Furthermore, the relationship between each component is not necessarily linear; for example, positive emotions do not necessarily have to influence positive actions first and in order to influence positive meaning.
References
- Seligman, M., Parks, A., & Steen, T. (2004). A balanced psychology and a full life. The science of well-being (pp. 275-283). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. ←
- Fredrickson, B. (2001, March). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218-226. ←
- Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K., & Schkade, D. (2005, June). Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131. ←
- Csikszentmihalyi, M.: 1990, Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins. ←
- Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M. (2005, March). Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction: the full life versus the empty life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6(1), 25-41. ←
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*** "How do these 3 so-called ingredients lead to flourishing?" ***
That's the big question. There's no definite answer yet, but I’ll attempt a partial one:
Human behavior is incredibly complex. There probably won't be “one true way” that will lead to flourishing for every type of person.
As I stated in the post, one of these ingredients (positive emotions) leads to flourishing by providing people with the opportunities to build long term personal and social resources.
For example, people that feel amusement feel an urge to be playful and social. It’s likely the feeling amused will lead a person to pursue more opportunities for socializing than a person that’s feeling anxious. Thus, the positive emotion of amusement may help people build their social network.
Furthermore, we know that people who have a combination of all three components (positive emotions, positive actions, positive meaning) report significantly more life satisfaction than those that only have one or two of the components (or none at all).
*** "Isn't flourishing about having a lot of positive emotions, meaning in life, and doing good things? Sounds like you are saying the way to create water is to have water. " ***
Yes. But it's a two way street: having positive emotions, meaning in life, and doing flow producing activities leads to flourishing, and flourishing leads to having positive emotions, meaning in life, and opportunities for flow producing activities.
So what I’m trying to say is: 2H + 1O = H2O, and H20 = 2H + 1O ;)
*** "Doesn't make sense until you explain what on earth flourishing is." ***
Good point. I'll address this further in a future post.
But to answer your question:
“Flourishing” will be a different construct depending on whether we are talking about people, organizations, or societies.
For individuals, flourishing is usually talked about in terms of subjective well-being (“happiness”) in the literature.
I suppose you can think of flourishing as the opposite of depression. Keep in mind that we don’t actually know what depression is. But to find out if a person is depressed all we need to look at are a set of signs.
Positive psychologists are now trying to find out what the exact signs of flourishing are – so I guess I should have titled my post with something like “3 Signs of Human Flourishing”
*** How do you talk about emotions without actions? Positive emotions make you do something, this is action.” ***
True, emotions may make you act in a certain way.
But, emotions are primarily psychological experiences that give meaning to certain events. You may act in a certain way based on how you feel during that experience, but that doesn’t mean you actually will.
Again, the purpose of this post was to provide a general overview instead of specific details.
*** “Seems like a mess.” ***
Hope it makes more sense now. If not, keep firing away :P
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