What does it take for humans to not only survive, but to thrive? Researchers at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, aim to figure that out with a new initiative.
Together with partners at Harvard University, the Institute for Global Human Flourishing hopes to better understand what factors contribute to creating a fulfilling life. They’ve been collecting data from culturally and geographically diverse countries across the world, asking participants about life satisfaction, mental and physical health, and social ties, among other categories.
Byron Johnson, director of the Institute for Global Human Flourishing at Baylor, joined the Texas Standard in Waco to talk about the institute’s formation and what the team hopes to accomplish. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: I want to ask you about that title, “global human flourishing.” I mean, I think it may sound like a somewhat ambiguous or vague concept for some. What exactly are we talking about?
Byron Johnson: Well, flourishing is a way of looking at how you’re doing in all aspects of your life. Not just are you happy.
You may have heard of something called the World Happiness Report that comes out every March. That report is based on one question on a scale of 1 to 10.
How happy are you?
Yeah, it’s called Cantril’s Ladder. But we ask 109 questions, and so we want to know how you’re doing in all aspects of your life
How are you doing physically? How are you doing mentally? How are you doing in relationships with other people? How are you with character and virtues and meaning and purpose? And how are you doing financially?
We think all of these things taken together give us a more comprehensive idea of how well someone’s doing.
So who do you ask these questions of? I mean, you’re obviously based here in Waco. What is your territory?
Well, this is what sets this study apart from any other. We’re interviewing over 200,000 people around the world in 22 different countries in close to 40 languages, and nothing like this has ever been done before.
So it’s the largest longitudinal study in history where we’re following the same people. And so we wanna know how they’re doing today, next year, year after and the year after.
Longitudinal – how long do you foresee this going? How long have you been doing it?
Yeah, it’s a five-wave study.
So on April the 30th, we released findings from about 40 studies in one day, which is unprecedented, actually. This is with the Nature Portfolio of journals, so some of the top journals in the world in terms of science.
And we’re in the process now of working on data from wave two, and we’re the field with wave 3. So all total it will be a five-year project.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but I have to ask, given that, you read some scientific journals or you read an article here and there, and I don’t think many go very deep into the question of what even happiness is, much less taking it kind of seriously.
Which I guess brings me to the question I have for you: Why take it so seriously? What does it mean to know more about happiness?
I think that one of the things that we’re hoping will happen from this project is that, for example, businesses will start taking an interest in the whole person of their employees.
And so we’re being inundated at the moment from businesses calling us. They want to be known as flourishing companies. Schools are calling. Hospitals are calling, they want to be known as flourish institutions. Houses of worship are calling. They want to be known as flourishing congregations.
But very often, believe it or not, we don’t ask these kinds of questions about people. So the federal government does not ask the questions that we’ve been asking. And we think we’d like to contribute to lift people. We want to help.
See, I think about like, say, the way that we talk about artificial intelligence or we talk about the rise of technology and whether or not we are more content or this is, in fact, leading to a better sense of life.
The kind of data that you’re getting would help us answer that question with more specificity it seems to me.
Absolutely. And one of the key findings from our first wave of studies is that young people all across the world are not doing well. And this is a change.
And this is supported by the data?
Oh yeah, it’s supported by the data. And again, the study is a very rigorous study. That’s why we’re publishing in outlets like Nature, the number one science journal in the world.
But young people are struggling. It used to be a U-shaped curve, meaning young people do really well. And then the older you get, as you get married, you have kids, you have a mortgage, you have bills, you have aging parents… Maybe not so well. But then as you get older and elderly, you do well again.
So there’s a U-shaped curve, but no longer. It’s a J, which means young people are really struggling all across the world, dealing with anxiety, stress, depression.
So this is a cause for concern. It’s not a problem unique to the United States – it’s a global problem.
I guess most people would think, well, this must be tied to certain things that have changed over the past 30 years – technology, social media.
I think that’s part of it. It’s part of it because there are places, because our study takes place all across the world, we talk to people that live in remote villages that are 100 miles from a major city. It’s a study that’s a random sample, if you will.
So we’re studying basically 66% of the world’s population of representative sample. Which means you get people in urban centers as well as people that live in rural communities.
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Well, what other factors would there be? Environment, perhaps?
I think that’s a part of it. I mean, we hope to unpack and figure out over time what’s really happening here. Why is it that young people are struggling so mightily? What can we do about it?
And then, you know, what can we do when we learn that Indonesia ranks number one – United States, in the middle of the pack, and most of the developed world in the middle of the pack.
So why is it that some of the countries that you would think maybe shouldn’t be at the top of the list are actually at the top the list? What’s going on there? Why do they have meaning and purpose that seems to elude other countries?
Meaning and purpose. I want to ask about the Harvard connection here. What’s that?
So Harvard is home to the Human Flourishing Program. And they are kind of the leaders when it comes to studying human flourishing. And I’ve led an institute here on the empirical studies of religion.
And so we met in 2018 – Tyler VanderWeele, the leader of that program, and I met. And we just kind of came up with this idea: What if we could work with Gallup, who I have been working with for decades, and do something that’s never been done before – do a global study over time?
And so it took three years to get it funded. It’s a $48 million project, and so it wasn’t just a snap to get funded. But it puts Baylor and Harvard smack at the epicenter of the flourishing world.
How would you gauge success for this project? How would you say, “yeah, mission accomplished”?
Yeah, I think the first mission was accomplished. We’re probably going to publish 150 papers just from wave one.
But ultimately, what we hope will happen is that policymakers will be interested in the findings. Like San Antonio reached out to us right off the bat – one of the first cities to reach out – then Cincinnati reached out, then Columbus, Ohio.
People looking for how to improve?
“How do we become a flourishing community? We really do want our community to do well. We realize we have some blind spots.”
So I think that affecting policy will be a great thing.
