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What Makes A 'Good Life'?

EnolaGaia

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Newly reported research results suggests there's a third critical aspect or dimension involved in evaluating one's life. The first two such aspects are the classics "being happy" and "finding meaning." The third aspect identified by these researchers is "psychological richness" - basically novelty and variety in life experiences and what we draw from them.
A 'Good' Life Doesn't Necessarily Have to Be Happy, New Psychology Research Shows

What makes a 'good' life? And how do we measure it? These are questions as old as humanity itself - with many potential answers - but a new study places the emphasis on living in a way that's 'psychologically rich'.

That richness is defined by experiences that are out of the ordinary, varied, complex and – perhaps most importantly – cause a shift in perspective for the person going through them, according to social psychologists Shige Oishi ... and Erin Westgate ...

Their new study finds that to some people, a psychologically rich life is more important than being happy or finding a sense of meaning – the two main areas that current psychological research tends to be concerned with when it comes to evaluating a 'good' life.

"Unlike happy or meaningful lives, psychologically rich lives are best characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences," write the researchers ...

"We present empirical evidence that happiness, meaning, and psychological richness are related but distinct and desirable aspects of a good life, with unique causes and correlates."

The researchers aren't saying that psychological richness operates completely independently from happiness or meaningfulness, but that it's a part of our wellbeing that needs more attention.

Having a happy life involves goals such as positive feelings and overall satisfaction, while finding meaning in life is associated with realizing our potential and maximizing our talents, reaching goals and making a difference. ...

Oishi and Westgate found that psychological richness could be separated from happiness and meaning when it came to people assessing their own lives and well-being.

"Unlike happiness, our conception of richness allows for moments of discomfort and unpleasant emotion" ...

"We show that a non-trivial number of people around the world report they would choose a psychologically rich life at the expense of a happy or meaningful life, and that approximately a third say that undoing their life's biggest regret would have made their lives psychologically richer" ...

The pair notes that moving abroad, changing careers, or being immersed in challenging art – James Joyce's novel Ulysses gets a particular mention – are three examples of the sort of psychological richness that people are looking for.

Curiously, they note that research on this subject "suggests that a good life may not always be pleasant, and that there is value in leading lives that investigate different perspectives." ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/life-d...ny-of-us-just-want-to-be-psychologically-rich
 
Here are the bibliographic particulars and abstract for the research report ...

Oishi, S., & Westgate, E. C. (2021).
A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning.
Psychological Review. Advance online publication.
https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000317

Abstract
Psychological science has typically conceptualized a good life in terms of either hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. We propose that psychological richness is another, neglected aspect of what people consider a good life. Unlike happy or meaningful lives, psychologically rich lives are best characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences. We present empirical evidence that happiness, meaning, and psychological richness are related but distinct and desirable aspects of a good life, with unique causes and correlates. In doing so, we show that a nontrivial number of people around the world report they would choose a psychologically rich life at the expense of a happy or meaningful life, and that approximately a third say that undoing their life’s biggest regret would have made their lives psychologically richer. Furthermore, we propose that the predictors of a psychologically rich life are different from those of a happy life or a meaningful life, and report evidence suggesting that people leading psychologically rich lives tend to be more curious, think more holistically, and lean more politically liberal. Together, this work moves us beyond the dichotomy of hedonic versus eudaimonic well-being, and lays the foundation for the study of psychological richness as another dimension of a good life.

SOURCE: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-74886-001
 
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