Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being: Progress, Promises, and an Agenda for Future Research

Authors

Laura D. Kubzansky, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Eric S. Kim, University of British Columbia
Julia K. Boehm, Chapman UniversityFollow
Richard J. Davidson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jeffrey C. Huffman, Massachusetts General Hospital
Eric B. Loucks, Brown University
Sonja Lyubomirsky, University of California, Riverside
Rosalind W. Picard, MIT Media Lab
Stephen M. Schueller, University of California, Irvine
Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, Université du Québec À Trois-Rivières
Tyler J. VanderWeele, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Katey Warran, University College London
David S. Yeager, University of Texas at Austin
Charlotte S. Yeh, AARP Services, Inc.
Judith T. Moskowitz, Northwestern University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-3-2023

Abstract

Psychological well-being, characterized by feelings, cognitions, and strategies that are associated with positive functioning (including hedonic and eudaimonic well-being), has been linked with better physical health and greater longevity. Importantly, psychological well-being can be strengthened with interventions, providing a strategy for improving population health. But are the effects of well-being interventions meaningful, durable, and scalable enough to improve health at a population-level? To assess this possibility, a cross-disciplinary group of scholars convened to review current knowledge and develop a research agenda. Here we summarize and build on the key insights from this convening, which were: (1) existing interventions should continue to be adapted to achieve a large-enough effect to result in downstream improvements in psychological functioning and health, (2) research should determine the durability of interventions needed to drive population-level and lasting changes, (3) a shift from individual-level care and treatment to a public-health model of population-level prevention is needed and will require new infrastructure that can deliver interventions at scale, (4) interventions should be accessible and effective in racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse samples. A discussion examining the key future research questions follows.

Comments

This article was originally published in Affective Science in 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00167-w

Recommended Citation

Kubzansky, L. D., Kim, E. S., Boehm, J. K., Davidson, R. J., Huffman, J. C., Loucks, E. B., Lyubomirsky, S., Picard, R. W., Schueller, S. M., Trudel-Fitzgerald, C., VanderWeele, T. J., Warran, K., Yeager, D. S., Yeh, C. S., & Moskowitz, J. T. (2023). Interventions to modify psychological well-being: Progress, promises, and an agenda for future research. Affective Science, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00167-w

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.