A recent editorial in Nature Human Behavior, one of the top science journals, was titled "Promoting Flourishing."  Amen brothers and sisters!  

We have been on a mission to measure and improve flourishing for the better part of a decade so we agree that promoting flourishing is essential to advance health and happiness.  But, we disagree on how flourishing should be measured and "promoted."  

The editorial accompanies the publication in the same journal of a research article by Tyler VanderWeele, a Baylor University social scientist, and Byron Johnson, a Harvard University epidemiologist. Their multiyear, multicounty study is primarily funded by the John Templeton Foundation and its associated charities which, for full disclosure, has also funded my lab.  

There are two issues with these articles that reduce their value to the general public.  To be fair, the editorial was aimed at scholars, but scholarship should ultimately benefit society as a whole so my critiques are valuable to both scholars and individuals interested in improving their own ability to thrive.

My first concern is that the research in Nature Human Behavior is based on surveys, asking people if they are flourishing on multiple dimensions and relating this to a large number of individual and external factors.  While the researchers should be lauded for collecting these data over time to relate changes in underlying factors to changes in flourishing, there is copious evidence that people poorly report their own emotional states because these are largely hidden from conscious awareness. Surveys also lack a consistent baseline when relating how people feel so we must be careful in relating subjectively reported data to objective factors like marriage or family size.  For example, is your flourishing right now a 4 or an 8?  And, is your 4 my 8?

The reported research is based on analyses of surveys in 22 countries, an approach that deserves praise as these researchers seek to find insights outside of the most-often studied wealthy countries. But, a problem with this approach immediately arises. Exactly the same questions were used in each country and it is well-known that surveys poorly translate across languages and cultures. "Flourishing" in Tanzania may have quite a different meaning than in Indonesia; countries both included in the study.  The lack of cultural nuance adds noise to the data so the findings must be taken with skepticism.  

When I did field research among subsistence farmers in the rain forest in Papua New Guinea, the observationally happiest people took drugs, particularly local euphorics.  Drugs can increase acute happiness but, as we all know, have detrimental long-term effects on flourishing. But, when I asked the drug-imbibing farmers I studied if they enjoyed their lives, they uniformly reported "yes." Clearly their approach to flourishing should not be followed by most other people.  

My second concern is that the reported findings have little practical use.  Low quality data, even a lot of it, is unlikely to provide useful new insights into the most important factors that promote flourishing, most of which are already known.  These include having good health, having a job, having a rich social network, being married, and being religiously active.  Perhaps how these factors vary by country is of interest to researchers, but this does not inform people who want to improve their ability to flourish. In addition, knowing what makes Indonesians or Tanzanians happy likely has little impact on the choices that Americans or Mexicans can make to increase their own flourishing.

An alternative approach, averaging findings across all the countries studied, still does not provide advice a specific individual can use in a specific country.  For example, higher incomes are associated with flourishing, but most people have little control over their salaries.  

We took a completely different tack.  By launching the world's first app, SIX, that continuously measures thriving neurophysiologically, each individual has an objective and highly accurate measure of what contributes to their ability to thrive.  Findings from SIX are also comparable across individuals because the data are anchored to neural responses that are outside of conscious control. SIX shows individuals exactly what experiences increase their own flourishing by linking to users' calendars and locations.  Moreover, SIX gives users a clear daily goal to thrive--published research from my lab has shown that people who have six or more Key Moments per day are thriving.  These individuals are passionately engaged with people and in activities, doing things that bring joy to themselves and to those around them.  SIX users directly increase their flourishing by doing more of those experiences that produce Key Moments.  

Many enlightened companies offer SIX as an employee benefit. Leaders at these companies understand that employees who are not thriving are unproductive and are likely to quit their jobs.  Sustainable profits require a sustainable and thriving workforce.  Rather than offer "wellness theater" like meditation rooms that few employees use, SIX shows employees exactly which activities contribute to their own health and happiness and demonstrates to leadership the ROI from wellness programs.  

In our view, individuals, organizations, and societies truly flourish when people are empowered to make choices that bring them joy.  SIX shows users  exactly how to do this by quantifying the unconscious value of experiences and bringing this into conscious awareness without asking weird questions that result in weird answers. 

There are five things every person can monitor to increase flourishing: get restful sleep, eat a healthy diet, get regular moderate exercise, maintain a rich social network, and have a sense of purpose in life and act on it.  The first three are well-known and easy to measure.  SIX will show you how to increase your emotional fitness by building your social network and finding your purpose.  Indeed, those with rich social networks and purpose sleep better, eat better, and exercise more.  SIX is free, so start using it today.