Global Flourishing Study

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today we're discussing human flourishing, the landmark Global Flourishing Study, one of the most comprehensive studies of human existence ever undertaken, and a first of its kind multi-year investigation into human flourishing, recently released key insights from its first wave of data, highlighted by a gathering at Gallup Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to share that along with partners from Harvard University and the Center for Open Science.
With us today are Byron Johnson, Global Flourishing Study, principal investigator and director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor, and Matthew Lee, professor of the Social Sciences and Humanities at Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, and a member of the yet Global Study of Human Flourishing Research Team. The Global Flourishing Study remains the largest funded research project in Baylor history and is in the midst of gathering data from over 200,000 individuals across more than 20 nations over a five-year period. Byron and Matt are with us today amidst this busy time. Appreciate you all taking the time to share. It's an exciting time for GFS as we'll call it in a shorthand. Appreciate you both being with us.

Byron Johnson:
It's great to be with you. Derek.

Matthew Lee:
Wonderful to be with you.

Derek Smith:
Great to have you here. And I want to start off with something hopefully simple, although there might be a lot of words for it for both of you. Fill in the blank here, just sifting through this first wave of GFS data and then sharing the insights with the world here this last week in Washington D.C., what has that been to you?

Byron Johnson:
I think two words come to mind. One relief that we finally made it to the finish line, and gratitude. When you think about the size and scope of the project, I just feel grateful to be a part of it and grateful that Baylor could be a part of it with us and overjoyed to be a part of a landmark project like this. It's something that you don't plan on in your career. So gratitude, I think.

Matthew Lee:
Yeah, I guess I would share that we've been talking about the release of the first wave of data for so many years now. It's just such a relief to have that out there and to offer that as part of a broader conversation about what does flourishing mean and how is it experienced by people? And of course, one survey cannot answer that question completely. But we've been involved in a lot of dialogues around the world where people have contributed their own perspective and their own definition of flourishing. And now we can come back and say, how does that connect with the main findings that we're seeing already in this first wave of the study along with everything else we've been researching over the years, because we're both involved in so many projects. But to have this finally available and to be able to share it freely is a great relief for us.

Derek Smith:
Byron, you've been immersed in this for so long. For people who aren't as familiar with GFS, how would you describe it and why? Matt mentioned that one survey cannot uncover the totality of human flourishing, and yet this is more than one survey. So could you take us inside why this is different?

Byron Johnson:
Yeah. I've worked with Gallup since 2000 and I had the privilege of working with George Gallup Jr. doing surveys of religion in the United States, and these are typically surveys that take five or 10 minutes to complete, and usually 1,500 people are interviewed on a particular topic, whatever that topic might be. Let's just say it's on forgiveness. We've had so much fun doing that kind of work, but imagine if you will, not talking to 1,500 Americans, but talking to 200,000 plus people in 45 languages on all the continents around the world and trying to ask not just one item, but 109 different kinds of constructs.
So it's breathtaking. It's never been attempted before to have a team of about 50 people working on the project between Baylor and Harvard. These are all extraordinary developments that are still mind-boggling for us, even though we've been at this since 2021, and it took us three years between 2018 and 2021 to get the project funded. And so it's been a long time coming. It is hard to get your brain around something this significant because we're generating so many publications and people around the world will be generating thousands and thousands of publications and never really exhausting the potential from the project.
So something like this just doesn't come along very often. I hope that gives you just kind of a glimpse at the size of it and why I think it's so important, and to do it over time to follow the same people. When I was telling you about the surveys we've done with Gallup, those are different, 1500 people. Every time we do a survey, these people, we're going to stay in touch with them to see how they're doing over time. And so that too has added a lot of complexity to the project. How do you do something like that?

Derek Smith:
Well, it is funny, longitudinal. There's some portions of the population. Their eyes may glaze over when they hear the word longitudinal, but scholars, their eyes light up when they hear the word longitudinal. What does that for this project?

Byron Johnson:
Well, it's rare because it's expensive, and that's why the longitudinal studies that have taken place are really well known, whether it's a city in Denver or Baltimore where they followed 3,000 people over time. These are important kinds of projects because it does allow you to move beyond correlation and to do more causal studies, which we're not doing in wave one, but very quickly we will be turning to those kinds of studies with wave two data, which are just now being released to the public.

Derek Smith:
And some great partners with this big names. You mentioned Gallup, the Center for Open Science and Harvard University. What do they bring to this?

Byron Johnson:
Well, the folks at Harvard where we basically stole Matt from, Matt was at Harvard for four years working with Tyler VanderWeele, the other co-PI on the project, and they just have an incredible team at Harvard and for us to be able to partner with them. They're the leaders. If you look at human flourishing, the great work that they've been doing since I guess around 2016, Matt thereabouts.
And so just to partner with them, they're the best. And then Baylor brings a set of intangibles to the table as well. And because religion is such an important part of the Global Flourishing Study itself so that expertise, I think more on the Baylor side than on the Harvard side. And then the Center for Open Science, which I could talk all day about, but I'd like for Matt to share with you a few things about why they have become such a huge asset and partner for us.

Matthew Lee:
Yeah, thank you, Byron. I was not trained to participate in open science. Most of us were not. It was not normal. It was very rare. And it's still rather rare. One of the, I guess, learning experiences for me is both how important it is to engage in open science, but also that it's not really that difficult, but what's the motivation to do it? In our case, this motivation was provided to us. You will do it as an open science project, as a condition of funding. Okay, great. What does that mean? I wasn't trained to do that.
Well, when you look at some of the criticisms of other large well-being studies, one critic I just read recently said, "Look, the key to science is reproducibility." And we've been asking for these data for 20 years and we can't get it so how can we reproduce it? How can we know that what they said is happening is actually what's happening? And that's just not going to be an issue for us because we have released the data through the Center for Open Science. Anyone can access it without a fee. And-

Matthew Lee:
... anyone can access it without a fee. And we've shared all of the pre-registration reports outlining what we were planning to do before we did it, along with the computer code that we used to run the analyses. And so there's no ... In graduate school, I remember some of my peers talking about torturing the data until it confesses. In other words, I have a position I would like to advocate for and I want to make sure that the data support my position. And that's exactly the wrong thing for science. And so, what we've done is in advance we've said, "Here's what we're testing. Here's what we think we'll find." And whatever we find is what we report. You don't change the analysis after you declare what it is you're going to do.
And so, anyone can look at our computer code and say, "Oh, I would've done that differently." Or, look at the data and change the variables that they want to look at and how they structure the models. So, all of that is completely open. And so, I think it's really the spirit of generosity in research that has not been part of my experience for most of my career. Usually you've got your data, you're trying to push your position, and you don't want to share the data because you want to have a monopoly on that for career reasons or for your contribution or your legacy. I think those are the wrong motives for science.
And so, this has really been an opportunity for me to have a second graduate training. It's like going back to graduate school, which at times, it's a burden. There are some additional steps and some things that we're not familiar with, but we've done it together. And that's the other thing I would say about this project. There's so many people collaborating in really supportive ways to try to learn how to do this as well as we can and to share it with the world in ways that we are really confident that we've got something worth sharing here.

Derek Smith:
That's great.

Byron Johnson:
To add to that, Derek, the founders of the Center for Open Science did significant research themselves on things like cancer research, where they tried to replicate findings, and in approximately half of the studies that they looked at, they could not replicate the findings.

Derek Smith:
Wow.

Byron Johnson:
And so, this is a concern. If everybody is doing this the right way, we should come up with approximately the same kind of findings. And so, this is an advance for science, a thought we didn't have entering into the project. We wanted to advance knowledge on flourishing as well as allied areas, but the fact that it could become a model for good science has just been a byproduct of the work. So, that too, is something that we're pretty excited about.

Derek Smith:
It's not something I necessarily would've thought about when you first started talking about this idea, but it's all out there in the light. It's all out there.

Byron Johnson:
Yeah. I think that we are, like most scholars, we wanted to be able to quote, "milk the data" as much as we possibly could get, all the storylines covered. In open science, that's not possible. We get the data when everybody else gets it, even though we were the ones pulling together the project to produce the data. So, that too, was a learning curve for all of us, as Matt's described, and what we thought might not be the best idea, in fact, has turned out to be the best idea.

Derek Smith:
That's fantastic. As we visit with Byron Johnson and Matthew Lee. And you do have some initial, we'll call them insights, I don't know if they're findings exactly, but insights early on, that we'll talk about here in a little bit.
But before we get to that, I want to ask a little more, Matt, starting with you. We've had Byron on this show before when we were talking about this as a newly funded project, an advancing project, and I haven't got to ask you some of these questions. So, I'm curious, for you, where are some of the places that your role with the study takes you, some of the settings you're in or some of the jobs you get to do?

Matthew Lee:
Yeah. I mean, certainly contributing to articles that will be published in peer review journals, I mean, that's at the core of what we do. But what's been a lot of fun for me, even as we're just now releasing the findings, but just to imagine how this will enrich the public talks that I give either online or in person around the world, and some of the communities of practice that I've been working with, who are interested in happiness or wellbeing or quality of life or something that's not fully flourishing.
And so, what I can now do with these findings is enrich all of those conversations and invite people to collaborate on papers for academic journals, but also to begin to think about how to apply what we're learning from the research in daily life, whether it's in a school, or a business corporation, or a government organization, or a nonprofit, or a church, wherever that might be, how do we put these findings into practice?
And so, part of the joy of being involved in these cross-cultural dialogues is that people with different perspectives will share their understanding of what the good life is, or our friends in Spain called it plenitude in fulfillment. And they said, "We like that word a little bit better than flourishing." I said, "Okay, but we're talking about the same thing." So, how we signify it is less important than the fact that we're actually communicating. I understand you, you understand me. And now we can say, "Here's what we're learning around the world."
And the project was set up in such a way to make sure that there was great cultural diversity, different types of countries, sizes, population, geographic area, cultures. Many countries have multiple cultures within them. And so, we really tried to explore that diversity. And now I can just imagine all of these conversations and work with communities of practice being so enriched by what we're learning from the survey.

Derek Smith:
Probably a good question for me to ask you here. You mentioned that in Spain, they have a different word for it, but we talk about human flourishing. What are we talking about? What constitutes that? I know you've got some specific definitions within the study, but let's all come to a common definition here as we listen in.

Matthew Lee:
Well, one of the interesting aspects of dialogue is that you don't always fully land on a consensus around this. What we've been using, and again, as Byron mentioned, I'm affiliated with the program at Harvard, we've been trying to distinguish well-being, which is the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good as they pertain to that individual from flourishing. And flourishing is the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good, including the context in which that person lives.
And so, in a report that I'm working on right now to sort of make the first wave findings more accessible to people like my mom, who don't have PhDs, but they really want to know what's in it for my life? How would I apply this in my own life? I further elaborate that what we mean by context includes the complete well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems. So, the individual's making a contribution to the greater good and these contexts are also making a contribution to the individual. And so, we're trying to understand that interaction. And as Byron was suggesting, once we have more waves of data, we can begin to control for baseline levels of some of these factors and see how things change over time. And then we get a better understanding of how the contexts are shaping the individual experience and vice versa.
And then we can begin to link these findings to economic indicators that are not subjective survey measures, but something like gross domestic product. We can start to see what's the causal relationship? And it's tricky to use causal language. Sometimes we say we're approaching causality, but we're getting pretty close to understanding causal relationships with some of the statistical methods that we're using and the kinds of data that we can-

Matthew Lee:
Statistical methods that we're using and the kinds of data that we can bring to bear on this individual context interaction.

Derek Smith:
And as I ask this, I feel like we could probably do a whole additional show, and maybe we should one of these days about a question like this. But when you talk about this, I want to ask you specifically again about domains. But I mean, so could someone, I mean when we talk about these definitions of flourishing, could someone with a disease or a disability or a tough station in life still be flourishing based on some of these domains?

Matthew Lee:
I'll give a quick answer and I'd love Byron to jump back in. But if we think about some of the flourishing domains that we were able to measure with this survey, and of course there were a lot of things we would've liked to have measured, but the cost constraints required us to drop some things. But any, I think reasonable understanding of flourishing would include the domains that we have measured, like happiness, life satisfaction, mental, physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and then the financial and material stability necessary to sustain those domains over time. And so somebody could be flourishing in terms of meaning and purpose or character in virtue, but maybe not physical health.
And so we've actually done some research with a group of senior living centers, residential living centers, where the average age is 85 and their flourishing scores are quite high because they have a strong sense of close social relationships. They have a sense of meaning and purpose, and many of them are suffering from co-occurring serious physical health conditions that will probably mean they won't live more than a couple of years at best. And so even with cancer, even with some congestive heart failure and other things, you might not be flourishing on all domains, but that's why we emphasize that flourishing is multidimensional. It's not just how you happy you feel or whether you have a good economic quality of life, but it's all of these things, in a way that you can begin to make intentional decisions in your life about how to make trade-offs if necessary.
Would you want to live if some medical treatment would help you live another 10 years, but you won't be able to pursue the thing that gives your life so much meaning? Would you rather have two more years of deep meaning or 10 years of less meaning? It's really challenging for people, but that's why we say that flourishing is kind of like a journey, and you aim to do well and to be well in all of these domains. And sometimes life will limit your ability to do that on one or more. But at the core of this, we think is character and virtue because becoming a better person despite challenging circumstances has always been talked about by philosophers and theologians as kind of the essence of what it means to flourish.

Byron Johnson:
I was just going to add to that, one of the things we like to say is that flourishing is not the absence of pain and suffering. Because I think when people think of flourishing, they may be thinking of people that are doing so well. There is no suffering going on right now in my life, but we're finding that's not the case. And I also do research, so does Matt with offenders, and we're doing a project right now at a prison, a maximum security prison in Mississippi where we're studying about 100 inmates very closely, but another 35 in death row. So these are all people awaiting an execution date, so they're not getting out. In fact, they have a death sentence. And there is a church on death row led by the inmates themselves. And so we're surveying them, we're interviewing them and have been doing so for the last two and a half years. And guess what? They're flourishing.

Derek Smith:
Wow.

Byron Johnson:
And so I think the flourishing project in many ways is going to generate data that will be a head scratcher for a lot of people. Because you've heard this said before, a lot of people, if you could pick where you want to live around the world, the US is right up there in terms of a destination. But does that mean that the US is flourishing more than any other country in the world? Our data don't seem to indicate that.

Derek Smith:
Wow.

Byron Johnson:
So there's a lot of counterintuitive findings that we love. We love those kinds of things because it makes you ponder what's really going on here.

Derek Smith:
Well, and as we answer, as we talk about some of these initial findings, I know every one of them probably gives you an infinite number of other questions to ask, or rabbits to chase or just streams where you can now learn more about the human condition.

Byron Johnson:
Matt said something a minute ago that reminded me, we couldn't ask every question. So when we first were told you're going to have to cut, we go, "How deep?" They go, "Half the items have to go." That really hurt me. And then we cut half the items. And then they said, "Guess what? We have to cut again." Because you can only interview people for approximately 22 minutes. And then there's this issue of fatigue that sets in on surveys and interviews in person or over the phone. So that's prevented us from asking all the questions we would love to ask. That's just another challenge in doing a project like this with so many people. So there are trade-offs that you have to make along the way, but obviously there are other questions we would've loved to ask in addition to the ones we've asked.

Derek Smith:
I'm sure. Well, still a lot of great findings for sure, as we visit with Byron Johnson and Matthew Lee discussing the landmark Global Flourishing Study. Let's transition to some of these key insights. Again, wave one, you've been able to dive into that data, and of course you'll be able to cross check this in future years and see what builds over time. But let's talk about three main insights from this first wave, and I'll list them all and then we can go into them in depth. First is global differences and flourishing in the middle. Younger generations are lagging. And spirituality is a commonality. So let's start with that first one. What are you seeing when... What's it mean when we say that flourishing in the middle amidst global differences?

Byron Johnson:
Well, Matt, you want to take that one and I'll take the other one, the religion one?

Matthew Lee:
Yeah. I mean, if you think about which countries in terms of average flourishing scores as measured by our secure flourishing index, and that's those domains I just mentioned along with the financial material stability domain, which countries come out at the top of the list having the highest averages, and it's countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico. Then you compare that to the countries that come out at the top of gross domestic product, GDP, and it's United States, Sweden, Germany. So there's something going on in the high-income countries that is orienting human beings towards perhaps economic pursuits and other kinds of pursuits. But maybe we're neglecting the deep social relationships that help us find meaning and a sense of really being fully alive, having that fulfillment and plenitude. So we might have more material wealth, but maybe there's a social poverty or a spiritual poverty. And so that's one of the things I like about the Global Flourishing Study is that we're starting to unpack which aspects of religion and spirituality are going to help us understand once we get into the longitudinal findings.
But there's something about the middle-income countries that there's something going on there that's worth leaning into and learning from and with. And at the same time, I think we've done other research where we've found that factory workers in places like Mexico, China, Cambodia, who are very financially precarious, they say that I'm really worried about paying my rent and my own physical safety and ability to have food. They have very high scores on many of the domains of flourishing. And so we don't want you to flourish in spite of financial and material stability. So how is it possible for societies to create the conditions where people can have it all, so to speak? How can you have the financial prosperity and still the deep sense of meaning and warm social relationships? So when I look at some of the findings from the Global Flourishing Study, I'm really interested in this paper that I'm helping to lead on showing love and care to others. And when you look at the countries that have the highest average scores there, it's Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico.

Matthew Lee:
... scores there. It's Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico. Wow. So if we want to think about flourishing as multidimensional, the question is which domains and dimensions are the most important, and how is it possible to balance all of these things in a life well-lived?

Derek Smith:
And maybe I'll state the obvious here. As you described, many of these nations might have a domain where they lag that would make things easier. I mean, the hope is that as you put out these papers, but not just academic papers, but that this is available to politicians, thought leaders, social service agencies, that they can find areas that they can elevate, maybe a lagging domain.

Byron Johnson:
There's just no question about that. We hope, ultimately, that we can move the needle on public policy with later waves of data. But going back to some of the key findings real quick, Derek, I know we're running out of time. One of the things that you want to know about in a global study, are there universal findings, and there aren't that many universal findings because these countries are in fact so different. There's huge variation within countries, between countries, but there are some findings that are pretty shocking. And one is that young people are not doing well. You could argue that over the last 15 years, there's been a global rise in unhappiness, and this should concern us all. That's a trend that's happening in the Third World and in the developed world. But no one seems to be affected more than young people. So as we think about the future, this gives us something that policymakers should be thinking about.
What are we doing wrong? Can we blame it on the internet and social media? Hopefully we can unpack that with future waves of data. But another finding that really does stand out is that religious service attendance matters across the world. And this is one of those things that we were really curious about because the research in the West would indicate you should have found that. But most of the research is here in the West. So for us to have a global sample and to find that religious service attendance matters across the world is very significant. And because our end size is so large, we're going to be able to look at different religious traditions, not just Christianity. And as Matt was saying, Indonesia consistently does really well. This is a Muslim majority country. So this really begs the question, "What is it that's happening in Indonesia?" So we're working pretty hard right now to identify people that can help us understand what's going on in Indonesia. That's so powerful. And I think religious service attendance will be a part of that mix too.

Derek Smith:
That's great. I want to ask you a couple of things about that while we have a couple of minutes. One, you mentioned with young people lacking. When we talk about young people, what ages are we discussing?

Byron Johnson:
Typically, 18 to 29, sometimes 18 to 24.

Derek Smith:
So that group that's sort of moving into the adult phase of life.

Byron Johnson:
Yes. So it's critical. I think that we know this, this is a trend that's not a positive trend, and what do we do about it? And even the surgeon general a couple of years ago recognized that we have a problem with loneliness and isolation in the US, and this comes with a huge price tag to our economy. So there are so many different reasons why we need to think smartly about policies that affect the young.

Derek Smith:
Absolutely. And you mentioned religious service attendance, obviously for you as director of Baylor ISR digging into this, how excited are you to dive into that to wave even more?

Byron Johnson:
Very, very excited to unpack it and to begin to look at religions like Judaism and Islam as well as other religious traditions. Again, this is a bonanza for us that we really haven't had before.

Derek Smith:
Well, Byron and Matt, as we wind down on the program today, it's been an exciting time to see this information released. The event in Washington, DC at Gallup, bringing so many people together. I guess the obvious question to close for each of you is, all right, you're moving into the next phase now, wave two's being released. You're going to be able to start stacking data on top of each other and seeing how it mix and match a little, not mix and match, I guess, but see how they interact with one another. So what's that going to look like as you move forward?

Byron Johnson:
Well, it's very exciting. We're still wrapping up studies from wave one. So all total, there may be as many as 100 to 125 papers from wave one alone. We had anticipated about 150 papers for all the waves. So to say that the team is overproducing is an understatement. And now we're diving into wave two data as we wrap up wave one paper. So again, very exciting and very grateful to be a part of such an amazing, amazing team.

Derek Smith:
Well, it's exciting to see.

Matthew Lee:
Yeah, I would just add to that with the longitudinal data, we'll be able to understand beyond just associations, what comes first, and then is there a causal relationship here? And as we think about even something about on this topic of young people not doing well, it's not the case in all countries. Let's lean into some of the outliers and understand that every society has strengths and every society has something to offer the broader conversation that we're having. And let's really study what the strengths are and why their strengths and that we'll be able to do that. I think a little bit with more with the longitudinal data. And so we are just setting the table with this first wave of findings.

Derek Smith:
That's incredibly exciting. We look forward to that. Byron, we've been seeing this journey a long time here. Excited to see these next steps and really appreciate you both being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Byron Johnson:
Appreciate it. Thank you.

Derek Smith:
Wonderful to have you here. Byron Johnson, GFS Principal Investigator and Director of Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor. And Matthew Lee, Professor of Social Sciences and Humanities at Baylor ISR, our guests today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. Reminder, you can do this in other programs online, baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.