Systems Informed Positive Psychology and Communitarianism(Seminar at Chiba University, 5 December 2019) †(Masaya Kobayashi, Professor, Relational Studies on Global Crises;
andHikari Ishido, Professor, Relational Studies on Global Crises)

Abstract: This is a research essay based on the transcript of the seminar “Systems
Informed Positive Psychology and Communitarianism”. Section 1 introduces the
topic “System Informed Positive Psychology (by Lindsay Oades); Section 2 provides
various projects of well-being and Ethical guidelines (by Aaron Jarden); Section 3
discusses the topic “Reformulation of Communitarianism and Social Systems Theory
as a Systems Informed Positive Psychology” (by Masaya Kobayashi). The Appendix
makes an examination, from development economics, of the linkage between
subjective well-being and sustainable development goals as objective indicators (byHikari Ishido).

†

This is a transcript of the seminar on “Systems Informed Positive Psychology andCommunitarianism”, organized by Chiba University and held at Tokyo Institute ofTechnology on 5 December, 2019. The figures contained in this essay are taken fromthe slides used in the speakers’ presentation material.
本報告は、千葉大学主催によるセミナー「ポジティブ心理学と政治：コミュ
ニタリアニズムを手がかりにして」（2019 年 12 月 5 日（木）午後 1－5 時、東京工業大学キャンパスイノベーションセンター多目的室１）にて以下の２名の研究者を講師として招へいし開催されたセミナーの内容を編集し、加筆修正したものである。本稿に含まれる図の出典は、セミナーにおける各発表
者の発表資料。邦訳は『公共研究』第 17 巻第 1 号、2021 年 3 月、114－180
頁参照。
セミナー講師：Professor Lindsay G. Oades PhD, MBA Director （教授、所長、Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne, Graduate School of Education、
University of Melbourne）, Dr.Aaron Jarden(准教授、University of Melbourne）

1.System Informed Positive Psychology (Lindsay Oades)
Masaya Kobayashi
Thank you for attending this seminar. We will focus on some important works ofProfessor Lindsay Oades and Associate Professor Aaron Jarden, such as systems
informed positive psychology1 and ethical guidelines of positive psychology practice 2.

Lindsay Oades
My name is Professor Lindsay Oades, I am the Director of the Centre for Positive
Psychology at the University of Melbourne and I know some of you came to the
University of Melbourne or came to Melbourne recently and so it’s lovely to see you
again.

There are many things I could talk about, but one of the things I think that may be
useful to talk about in the context of who’s in the room is some early work that I’mcurrently working on which fits inside what we are calling Systems Informed Positive
Psychology and I’m aware that some of you have been given a recent paper on the
Systems Informed Positive Psychology, which was recently published in The Journalof Positive Psychology earlier this year and it’s early online access, if so if you don’t
have a copy it’s online (Journal of Positive Psychology).

1Margaret L. Kern, Icon, Paige Williams, Cass Spong, Rachel Colla, Kesh Sharma,
Andrea Downie, Jessica A. Taylor, Sonia Sharp, Christine Siokou & Lindsay G.
Oades,“Systems informed positive psychology,” The Journal of Positive Psychology,
July, 2019, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2019.1639799
2
Ethical guidelines for positive psychology practice (version 1.0),July
2019,.International Journal of Wellbeing 9(3), DOI: 10.5502/ijw.v9i3.921

1

In essence, what we are trying to do is bring some of systems sciences broadly definedto the area of positive psychology and explicitly to deal with what we see as some of
the limitations of positive psychology, which probably most specifically is too much
focus or limited on the individual or assuming that the rest of the environment doesn’t
exist, and the individual operates by itself, and that’s why we’re bringing systems
science to that, and that is broad – there are multiple people who are involved in thatendeavor, particularly associate Professor Peggy Kern, who is not here with us on thisvisit, but who the primary author of that article and also leads that particular researchstream at our Centre.

The work I’m going to just briefly present today, Thriveability Theory, was work I’ve
been involved in for quite a while, which sits as part of the Systems Informed Positive
Psychology, but it’s not trying to represent all of what’s happening. It’s one – it’s myparticular angle on using a systems approach and as one of the reasons I’m here isbecause it includes and makes reference to broader, social and political forces, and also
trying to link it with communitarianism, which I found as something I thought was the– I believe that if we’re going to have a values-based approach, we needed to be explicit
about some of our assumptions, and so I was trying to be as explicit about the politicaland social philosophy underpinning it and that was where I came acrosscommunitarianism, which underpins this work.

On that note there are many influences, so as I’ve said systems science isone（Figure1）. Obviously, positive psychology is another. I’m aware some of you

2are from health, so the social determinants of health work, particularly influenced byMichael Marmot his work influences particularly the idea that agency is a dependent
variable, so we don’t assume that people that have agency and then can act on the worldsocial and economic conditions can actually create agency and then people can act on
the world, and Michael Marmot’s work on that.
Figure1 Thriveability Theory

Heavily influenced my thinking on this and for those of you who are development
economists we were just speaking with their colleague Professor Ishido minutes earlier 3.
This work is particularly influenced by the concept of capability, which of course sends
original work on capability, what we can be and do which attracted me because it’s afuture-oriented concept in the same way concepts like hope and optimism very popularand positive psychology, a future-oriented capability as defined by Amartya Sen is a
future-oriented concept. It attracted me as a way of unifying multiple disciplines in
3

The comment by Prof.Hikari Ishido (Chiba University) is attached as Appendix at the end.

3

this case namely psychology, education and economics, because capability is a concept
which tracks across three literatures at least and we’re currently doing a systematic
review on exactly there, what is capability and how is it used in the different disciplines
and particularly in the English-speaking databases we’re searching at the moment.

Sociology has influenced this work, particularly the structure agency debate, so theclassic debate is it the structure of society, which creates the human condition or is it
the individual agent who operates that debate is explicitly informed how I’ve structured
this theory, and as of already mentioned political philosophy or maybe I’m not evencalling it the right thing, maybe it’s social philosophy, maybe it’s the one I learned
about today. It is one of the reasons I’m here. I’m learning a lot, a rep aboutcommunitarianism, but that is one part of it, but also as I have Berlin’s work on freedom
from and freedom to has actually informed part of the architecture of this theory. A lotof positive psychology assumes freedom to and conveniently gets leaves out freedom
from. So for example, PERMA, A Well-being Theory of Professor Martin Seligman.
It assumes and explicitly, but it does assume that it’s a theory of well-being for freepeople, so it takes out a lot of the population who are not free and broadly defined.

I work in a faculty of education, so education is very important. Another part ofThriveability Theory is taking the idea of capability. The idea of people can learn skills
to be capable to have well-being which is the fundamental aim of positive education,
but if they can’t get to school – well, there isn’t a school, it’s hard for them to learn –well, it’s harder for them to learn. One of the challenges or one of the aims here is tobring a system science approach to look at how do the social economic conditions4

interact with the psychological conditions which then enable the idea or the experienceof well-being. It’s actually that bold attempt to try and work across disciplines and thenusing a systems science approach to integrate the disciplines.

And the final influence here is the idea of well-being philosophy. We’ve heard a lot
about hedonism or hedonic approaches to well-being. We’ve heard a lot about
eudaimonic approaches to well-being, but also there are others such as subjectivism or
the idea of value fulfilment different ways of describing what is the good life or what
is well-being, and the fundamental assumption is about, is it an experience or is it arelationship with an experience. If you take a hedonic approach it’s really a pureexperience. As soon as you talk about meaning or cognition about an experience, you’retalking about a relationship with an experience. Those fundamental debates about how
we want is what is well-being, but how do we conceptualize what is well-being has
also informed this what I sometimes feel is, but what we call quixotic Don Quixote’sview of storming the windmill. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but the ideaof sometimes I feel like this journey is impossible, because it’s so difficult, but I’ll try
anyway, and at the very least I’ve got a trip to Japan to talk about communitarianism.

This is the article that was published just this week, during the Congress. That is notabout Thriveability Theory as such, but it is about our attempt at bringing together
system science and positive psychology of which Thriveability Theory is one attempt.
As you’ll see when you go into system science and I know there’s some people in theroom that probably know more about system science than I do, but as you’ll see it’s a
big area, so it’s like saying Europe, but so you’re going to pick which systems concepts

5

you really use it. In Thriveability Theory at least one of the key systems concepts is
emergence. The emergence is probably the key guiding principle and that is I’ll explainthat more in a moment.

So another part of Thriveability Theory is some of the criticisms of positive psychology,
which are accurate or not that it focuses just on the positive and that’s all very nicely,
there’s a lot of suffering people, and I know we were talking this before about some ofthe people you work with have a very difficult life, and how did they get there, why are
they having such a difficult life, what are the social and economic conditions thatpeople struggle with and need to be free from or would be better if they were free frombefore we get to the discussion about what people need to, what can they work on tobe free to experience well-being. So it’s deliberately taking and bringing in thenegative aspects alongside the positive developmental aspects and trying to include
them in a comprehensive mid-level theory.

What five things are most important to avoid to have the best chance of experiencing
well-being in general for people, what five things if you could not have them in theworld would you remove or eliminate or reduce to have the best chance – not guarantee
the best chance from a probability point of view of experiencing wellbeing(Figure2・3).

6

Figure2 Thriveability Theory

Figure3 Thriveability Theory (Cont.)

What would the healthcare will say, disease maybe. Some of this stuff – this is very
basic. Some of these represent the major institutions of our society, hospital andpolitical systems, etcetera. This is a comprehensive theory. It’s looking at the big

7

pieces. The one that hasn’t been mentioned, which could be – is war these are the big
blocks that we’re trying to deal with.

That gives you insights into how – I’m taking you through how we’re building thetheory. These are examples only. We’re currently doing systematic reviews andlooking at the empirical evidence of what deserves to get in here. Everyone has an
opinion, but we’re looking at the evidence about what deserves to get in there, because
they’re not simple questions and they’ll always be debatable, but some of thecandidates just mentioned poverty and inequality, disease and disability, alienation,
isolation, violence, corruptions the other one that often comes up.

Those are legal, corruption aspects, and as I said, people will debate these, but inbuilding a theory we can’t be looking empirically on what’s in it before we finalize that.
I must say this is a work in progress, but I’m trying to give you an understanding of thearchitecture and the rationale for the theory, and then we start working through testingit, and using it.

That was one part of the theory. What we need to be free from another central part of
the theory is what well-being itself is, or what we are actually talking about. This iswhere the idea of emergence comes in and the fundamental definition of well-being as
has been used or assumptions about well-being what it is from this particular theory.

Put simply this approach used well-being as an emergent experience and there’s two
key words there. It’s an experience, so a lot of economists will try and look at objective8

indicators or objective measures of this, but fundamentally this is a psychological or
subjective definition, because it’s an actual experience that a person has had andreported, and of course the hedonic tradition – the hedonism approach that looks at is– it also defines well-being or happiness as an experience by definition, but a very
simple one. It’s pleasure and pain or some people more recently adding positive andnegative emotions into that the discussion, but essentially an experience, but I would
say a simple experience – transient and simple.

I’m actually talking about more complex experience and what I mean is a set ofexperiences, which can be brought together as a narrative. So I’m a happy person. How
do you know you’re a happy person, because you have a good experience, and another,and you tell a story, so I’m interested in that definition. I’m maintaining it as anexperience, but I’m not reducing it solely to a physical response to stimulus, which isessentially what I have done it few does, and the theory asserts that this comes or canbe usually thought of in three types(Figure2・3).

Firstly, their experience of connection and then it’s deliberately broad term. Has anyone
got a friend, is anyone married, can anyone think of or tell a story about a good timethey’ve had with another person or people. Everyone’s just smiling, which means yes.
So or likewise has anyone felt a sense of belonging in a group or a connection to a placeor had a spiritual experience where they feel connected with something bigger thanthemselves.

9All of these types of experiences would fit into that particular part of this. One part ofThriveability Theory is that is well-being that is one type of well-being. Meaning that
actual experience that you’re smiling about is well-being not that it predicts well-beingor something else out there that these are all predictors of. It’s defining that as the end
point, which is quite different than some approaches.

Secondly, the work with the capability itself. A few times I felt capable tell a story ofwhen I acted on the world, I did something, I was good at something, I felt confident,
I felt capable, I felt competent that cluster of growth related those ideas. So again, a lotof this is not new. It’s configuring it in a particular way, so that we can bring together
and test it. A lot of psychologists will argue is it agency, is itself efficacy, is itcompetency, and they’ll have lots of arguments about what I would call fine-grained
things, but at a public policy level, at a broader level. Some of that fine-grained isn’t
that important. It’s do that people actually feel like they’re capable, they have somelevel of agency or autonomy to act on the world and that is a dependent variable things
lead to that. It doesn’t just come automatically from nowhere.

And thirdly, the idea of contentment – experienced contentment. I feel good, I feel okay.
It’s going to be life satisfaction component in it, but it’s deliberately brought and it’s
not I feel happy or I feel good. It’s a broader sense of the contentment. A little bit more
we’re in a nation influenced in part by Buddhist traditions, so some of these ideas – theBuddhist idea of contentment is probably closer to this. It’s a broad-reaching settled
idea. It’s not a single emotion. It’s a whole life stance. So that broader sense of, I am

10

really doing okay. Things are okay. That is what we mean by contentment here, which
is different than the emotions which I’ll come to in moment.

That’s the high level. What I’m arguing is at least three types of experiences or thesethree themes in the stories we tell about our experiences of our well-being or at least
their stories about experiences and because they’re stories they involve multiple events,
and because they’re stories we integrate our experiences into them. So there’s a big
debate in the well-being literature about is that well-being or is that meaning. I’m
saying it’s both. It’s the attribution of meaning to our experiences or to our goodexperiences here is well-being, which is again a particular way of doing this.

One of the big aspects of the theoretical changes about this particular approach is what
it does with what gets called hedonism and what gets called eudemonism in theliterature. The argument is a happiness or is it well-being that’s a big debate that
continues.

What I’m arguing from a systems perspective is that the things that we usually callhedonic well-being or happiness in the literature that is more pleasure than pain or morepositive emotions and negative emotions. They are transient states or the impulse about,whether you should desire that I should move to something or move away fromsomething that’s transient motivational state. What Thriveability Theory does is rather
than argue that it should be hedonic well-being or it should be eudemonic well-being.
It takes a system perspective and says, “there’s a temporal dimension here, there’s a11

time dimension.” These are transient states from a systems perspective; it takes hedonic
well-being and makes that feedback (Figure4).

Figure4 Survival Dashboard

When you have a positive emotion, that is feedback from your environment about yourjourney towards a longer broader sense of well-being, which has been defined in astoried nature and so that changes the game significantly, because it gets out of thosearguments about well it’s eudemonic versus hedonic. It’s saying what hedonic is, what
I call the survival dashboard. These things have been built into by evolution. There isa reason you have pleasure and pain. There’s a reason you have positive and negative
emotions and there’s a reason why you run towards something or run away fromsomething. It’s evolutionary reasons.

These are feedback and they are immediate, but they are not what I would call wellbeing and they might be called happiness if you’re getting lots of pleasure or that’s apositive emotion, but they not a broader sense of well-being broadly defined. It’s notthat one is right and one is wrong, it’s not that hedonic approaches are wrong and

12eudemonic approaches are right; they’re actually different things and they have a
different time horizon as well. From a systems point of view, we’re treating the hedonic
stuff as feedback in a longer-term journey towards complex experiences of well-being.

Out of the temporal or the time dimension and people like Ed Diener, he refers to
subjective well-being as perishable or short-term happiness and eudemonic sometimes
is longer term, happiness that’s consistent with those views as well. I’m currently
writing a book which is titled “Don’t pursue happiness”, which is a deliberate allusion
to the U.S. constitution that’s to sell the book, but more importantly I don’t pursue
happiness, because pursuing happiness by this definition is means, well, it was simply
just going out to get positive emotions and seek pleasure, and what you’re doing is
you’re pursuing the signal, you’re pursuing the feedback.

The next part of it is “don’t pursue happiness,” “prepare for well-being,” and the“prepare for well-being” is “build capabilities at a psychological and educational level.”It’s build capabilities and skills at a social and economic and political level. It’s remove
those bad things that I was asking you about before. There’s a role for both thepsychological and educational and a role for the socioeconomic and political. One isthis theory is about social and economic is more about removing the bad things and thepsychological and education is more about building people skills to have the goodthings and I say more about, it’s not only what I’m told, one is all one, one is of theother. It’s a matter of emphasis and that relates to Isaiah Berlin’s work on freedom fromand freedom to. We want to be free from the bad so that people can be free toexperience well-being. That’s the architecture of the theory.

13

Masaya Kobayashi
Could you explain about the relationship between emotions and motivation,
relationship between these and hedonism/eudaimonism?

Lindsay Oades
What I am saying, this feedback obviously is a key systems concept, nonlinear so
feedback and then we change our behavior based on the feedback, and in this casefeedback from the environment, whatever that be a social environment, physicalenvironment, and its evolution has given us these things to survive. Not from the system,
but using a systems conceptualization by the concept of feedback and saying that
hedonism is actually feedback rather than happiness or well-being itself. It changes theway we think about having happiness or well-being. It’s saying, it’s not that happiness,
isn’t hedonism, that’s a feedback from the environment as part of a longer time journey
towards a broad-based well-being experience.

When I’m saying feedback and system, I’m saying feedback is a systems concept,
which I am using to insert into the debate about hedonism versus eudemonism, and I’msaying that both are relevant, but they’re relevant at different things and they’re relevantin different parts of our time horizon.

I call it the survival dashboard. I have two reasons. One is for marketing and branding
and making people remember it and meaning this is surviving, whereas what we’re14

after is thriving and it’s called Thriveability Theory. So it’s the survival versus thriving
distinction that’s more of a marketing remembering reason and more fundamental
scientific reason is that these things are from evolutionary theory. These are things thathave helped us survive.

We feel positive emotions so that’s very enforcing us to do something. We feel pain so
we take a hand off the fire and we see a lion or a Japanese snow dragon and so we’ve
run away. So we have an impulse, we have a motivation to run away. It’s called survival
because they literally have helped us survive as animals.

Masaya Kobayashi
People often face situations in which they abandon or give up hedonic things in a shorttime, which could lead to eudemonia in the long run. How do you explain thesesituations based on the survival dashboard?

Lindsay Oades
I think that’s probably a philosophical and an empirical question at the same time. Oneof the things by adding the temporal dimension, which I think time is one of the mostunderutilized dimensions in well-being theory and some people, for example, his
particular model is quite exclusive about time and present future trade-off and of coursethat language fits very nicely with economic analysis as well in the consecutive
investment and returns and things like that.

15One of the things I am interested in empirically when I can find some smart people toactually test this inner systems and quantitatively in systems approaches is my view isthat different people will have different weightings in the way they do that, so that we
individual differences and individual pathways to resolving the question you just raised,
so it is – I don’t know the answer empirically, but from this approach there are somemodels particularly developmental models which answer how that happens, but mygoal will be that we can at least profile different routes that people take to get wellbeing and how much different hedonic feedback plays in their journeys to well-being
if you feel, so long answer Some part of my answers I don’t know and part of it is we’re
working towards answering it and that relationships is something I would be interested
in knowing more about.

Masaya Kobayashi
Where is meaning situated in this theory?

Lindsay Oades
In my view meaning is how we relate to our experiences, so how we make sense of ourexperiences, meaning is in there and that’s when we see the whole sphere you can go
through things like pleasure meaning and I haven’t done it yet, but my plan is when I
do the next round of presentations is to actually go, this meaning is here and this one
lives here and this one lives here. They’re not always represented in the boxes, meaning
lives across all of those top level ones, because it’s the attribution of meaning to yourexperience of the series of events. So what does it mean to you when you connect to16

those people, what did it mean to you to be capable, why you can tint it what so that’s
cognition is about experience.

Coming to the mid-level so I started at the bottom level, which is the socioeconomic
and the challenges, things you wanted to be free from and I’ve talked about well-being
as an emergent experience. But what does it actually emerge from? It emerges fromwhat I’m arguing is the interaction of your set of capabilities with your set of challenges
and, of course, this context and inputs into that. What we want to go with the systems
model is to actually better operationalize this, make measurable and model a set of
negative challenges and actually give them weightings, type of individual capabilities
that is a set of skills that you’ve developed that if the environment allows you to use
them. You can use them, which is very similar to a SAN definition and then how do
those things interact and from the relationship of interactions between those parts thatis sets of challenges and sets of capabilities what emerges at a well-being level.

If you expand that out, if you have a set of these at the bottom and they say four or fiveof them and you could have numerical weightings to those and likewise a set ofcapabilities. A lot of the things that we talked about in positive education that we say
are going to help you have well-being, but if you have poor socioeconomic conditions
you can’t actually do a lot of the things and we assume that these are taken care of andthen we do our positive education initiatives.

So this theory is going to take both of those into account, but not just say they exist andthen add them up in a linear way, it actually using systems modeling. We actually want17

to test how do the interactions between different weightings with negative things anddifferent skills and capabilities enable emergence of well-being as defined through thatand hence the term thriveability is just to play on the term capability. So these are thethings that we can actually learn and enable people to use. These are the negative things
we can aim through socioeconomic and political policy to remove and thensystematically try to test those relationships.

The idea of just to get the concept of emergence, where most of us are in a family, isthe notion of your family more than your individual parts. The interaction between you
as family members constitutes family. I am arguing that the interaction between thesenegative things that would want to be free from, the capabilities we want to have to be
free to, the interaction between those is way of well-being will emerge from and wellbeing is an emergent experience as defined by this approach.

That’s the essential idea of the theory as to which challenges and which capabilities
that’s currently what we’re working through empirically to justify where we should
start. My guess is down the track what will happen is different contexts will emphasize
different capabilities in particular. That’s further down the track, but fundamentally I
want you to get the systems idea is the interactions of these parts is where well-being
may emerge from and then testing the relationships and be different for different people
in different contexts that’s the empirical piece, which we can model if we canoperationalize if we can get decent sets of data to at least model it, won’t be perfect,
but always enable us to develop and test different scenarios.

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Putting it all together there’s lots – I’ve tried to walk you through the four fundamental
parts – social, economic and political things we want to be free from, psychologicaland educational things we want to develop. To put some flesh on this, people argue,
you must have this, you must have emotional regulation, you must have self-regulationor you must have connection with nature as a capability or do people –psychologists
particularly in educational argue about this all the time, economists, sociologists argue
about this all the time, so I’m fine with that argue away, and help me build it or build
a better one. That’s where we’re trying to go and part of the challenge is just the sheer
complexity of getting different disciplines to talk to each other, because we often
reduce the explanation to the discipline we know. We try to explain everything. If we’re
psychologists with my trying explain everything in terms of the cognition. For an
economist we might try and explain everything using rational assumptions to do with
consumption or something, but they were relevant, they’re useful, but how do weactually foster interdisciplinary discourse and investigation in the service of well-being,
but also having a single framework?

The other implicit thing here is, we can educate and capabilities by definition in thisapproach are changeable and yes we can have public policy or at least attempt to dosomething about some of these things. Okay. I’ll just end with a couple of comments.
I’m writing a book which tries to bring together the essence of this idea. Don’t pursue
happiness is basically saying, don’t think that getting to the hedonic feedback indicators
as I have called them. This surviving dashboard is not going to get you there. It’s likethat’s what I call falling in love with the green light. It’s like if you go down the roadand you’ve got a green light it’s telling you to keep going. You just – got going I’m

19

just saying that I love you green light, your happiness – it’s not what we’re actuallytrying to do. We’re actually trying to keep going down the road. That’s just an indicator
to tell you to keep going.

Prepare for well-being is basically prepare through having capabilities, which are
future-oriented, what we can be and do, and it’s we can build them, and how is society
and social institutions helping us build those capabilities, which is different than more
simplistic messages that we are getting about three simple tips for happiness – three
simple tips to anything, because they inevitably ignore social and economic andpolitical conditions, and they’re soon plucked, and they’re promising, and they sell
books. That’s part of what this is about.

I am currently guest editor of International Journal of Environmental Research andPublic Health special edition on positive psychology and wellbeing literacy. I haven’t
said a lot about well-being literacy, but it is one area I’m currently working on, whichis really the language we use and how we communicate about and for will be. Reading,writing, speaking, listening, creating, viewing all of our ways of communicating about
well-being or the way we communicate to help somebody else’s well-being is what I
would call well-being literacy, and I would argue that’s one example of a capability
that we can measure an increase in the community.

I’m just letting that exists and we’re calling for papers for any broader systems orcommunity-based approaches to well-being and particularly those that have publichealth or language type emphasis. Hopefully that’s giving you a flavor of both the fact

20

that we’ve got systems work in the area of positive psychology and well-being, and theThriveability Theory is one theory I have started working on, and will continue to workon, because it’s not a small endeavor. I didn’t say as much about communitarianism,
because you already know about that, but as I said that’s in there as an assumptive
framework point, everything has an ideology or set of assumptions under it. I’m sayingthat set of assumption is under the that part of it and the reason that’s chosen is becauseof some of the evidence about the importance of relationships to well-being and so anapproach, which emphasizes human relationships we put in there, and that was one
reason that chosen to help bring that theory together.

Masaya Kobayashi
Could you please comment on the differentiation between various personal capabilities?

Lindsay Oades
I really in as much as the ones in the middle- these are more things that I have taught
and learned, – somebody learns a skill in the environment, that affords them to use it,
that’s a capability. So that’s a traditional capability. The one at the top to be honestwith you, it could even be called something else. It’s that experience of efficacy. It was
just called capability, because you could remember three Cs. It sits alongside theconnection and so these are formal capabilities. That one is more just a label of…

Masaya Kobayashi

21I wonder what the distinction between the concepts of capabilities and virtues orstrengths is.

Lindsay Oades
I think there is – when I was talking before about how we can have familiar concepts
on to it. The notion of strengths or at least the different characters strengths as tofinding positive psychology literature, would fit in part I feel strong. So these are allwhat you’d say experience-connection, experience-capability, and experience
contentment. These are actual lived experiences that people are reporting. When did
you feel strong, when did you feel capable or in the ethical realm when did you feellike you were living virtues, but that’s the experience level, but at the capability level
are we developing the character of the young people and how they learning in and how
we teaching in that will be coming down here some way.

Female SpeakerIs there any example of certain minor things that are embedded into the environment,
which provide positive feedback? I would like to know if we can design systems ortools to offer people positive feedback, because it is very important to have a better
survival adjustment, right?

Lindsay Oades
On the green and the green and the red on my survival dashboard is firstly positive andnegative information. Positive emotion – you’re smiling. You’ve given me feedback

22and you smile I feel good, I get approached motivations that is keep talking to you thatis fundamentals that you told me that there are very fundamental behavioral level.
Some of the green aspects there are already good. This is a micro level. This is a good
feedback, but I think you’re probably coming from more a broader base community orslightly bigger system I’m talking about a micro individual system at a bigger system.

There are examples of giving good feedback. One of Melbourne we have a local
government or a council region called Maroondah and I have school clusters – 27
schools that I work with, whether done positive education approaches in the schools
and they’re measuring the well-being of the children and the actual measurement – thenumbers, the data is being fed back to parents businesses, schools, and they literally sit
around and talk about the data is coming out of those measures so in a systems
framework that’s actually feedback into a whole community of 21 schools, which
they’re making literally feedback, which they’re making sense of.

You can think about feedback at the ever micro or the meso – different levels. I believe
you can design systems that afford feedback and you can teach people to interpret andall – interpret and use the feedback. So it’s not just the feedback of it. I think it’s how
do we use in terms of community development, how do we use the feedback. So interms of designing systems I think I just mentioned a capability. There’s a capability
to use the feedback as well.

If you’re getting pain and you’re not doing anything about it or you’re getting lots ofnegative emotions and you’re not doing anything about it or you’re not acting on your23

motivations to move away from danger, you’re not using feedback, I know that’s not
the answer, but it’s systems – talking about systems in general is always abstract. It’s
better with the examples.

Female Speaker
Yeah. I think we all would like to try to improve our environment.

Lindsay Oades
Yeah. Again, depending on which level you come in at, is a family, school, organization,community, government?

Male Speaker
When considering connection as a capability. It is important, but it is not a usual
attribute of a person?

Lindsay Oades
I think I was hearing in two parts to what you said. Firstly, the feeling of a connection
on the left hand side there is like I feel connected, that’s a good thing, and I can tellstories about being connected, but as a capability we can teach and enable people toconnect better, and I love that’s what we do and say as a parent and as schools we teacheach other how to communicate, be kind, make friends, volunteer, be pro-social ingeneral, maintain communities, and there’s actually a skill component to do that. It’s

24not all just goodwill. There’s actually skills on how they help people connect at theindividual level.

An open design thing too or the architectural we design doing so that people canactually connect lunch rooms, etcetera, or we design cities, so that people have open
spaces so they can be together. That’s another example, but the second part of what
you said, it’s very important is the community itself can have a capability, not just theindividuals, but I think again from the systems nesting framework I haven’t emphasizedthat today, but I think it would be very much measurable and testable that we could
look at community level or higher order concepts that weren’t looking just at theindividuals little capabilities. The same in capability. That sort of thinking often comesin the organizational literature to where they look at is this team capable or is thisorganization capable rather than is this collection of individuals capable. I think yourpoint is really good. I’m going to take it on board, nothing else look good.

Female SpeakerI find this interesting. You include emotion, hedonic sensory, and motivation in thesurvival dashboard. This is very understandable because the entire system is a positive
cycle. However, I wonder which one is the main aspect of the survival dashboard.

Lindsay Oades

25

Mainly because these are part of the old brain. If you think about immediate sensory
pleasure or pain or that immediate sensory input and likewise those fundamental
motivations to withdraw your hand or the motivation to run from a lion; they’re allbasic brain, early evolution brain development functions that were first survival,
whereas conscious cognition is higher order and came later.

The other reason is these are immediate in the moment things where it’s a lot of ourconscious cognition is about reflection or anticipation planning and the cognition partin many ways comes out in the reflection aspect on the top level stories we tell. WhenI make sense of my experience, I’m using cognition and that’s what a story is; it’s alinked cognitions about a series of events. So cognition is in there, but it’s in a different
part of the theory. It connects with the main attribution of meaning.

2.Various Projects of Well-being and Ethical Guidelines(Aaron Jarden)
Aaron Jarden
Hello, my name is Associate Professor Aaron Jarden. I work at the Centre for Positive
Psychology, The University of Melbourne, with Professor Lindsay Oades. My mainrole is Coordinator of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology Program at theCentre So I spend most of my time thinking about how to improve the Centre’s teaching
program and how to enable the students with the right knowledge base and skills to goout and apply this science of positive psychology in the real world.

26

Secondary to that, I love doing research and I want to do more research. Now that the
Masters is going really well, I will have more chance to do that. I just want to give youa flavor of some of the projects that I’m doing and if any of them are interesting to you,just stop me and I’ll tell you more about each one. So I will not go into great detail on
any one of them, but I just want to give you an example of some of the variety of the
projects that I’m involved in and leading and running.

I will also tell you a little bit about my background, so you know some context of why
I think some of the research projects that we’re setting up seem to us so important. I
started off my academic career as the philosopher, particularly interested in ethics andethical theory, and then later on applied ethics. And then from there I moved into
psychology and studied as a clinical psychologist. I got into that and then I’ve did a bitof work in IT and so I have backgrounds in philosophy, in clinical psychology, a little
bit in IT, and a little bit on business as well, but that’s when I discovered positive
psychology and I’ve been in this area of positive psychology for the last 15 years.
Bringing together those broad kinds of backgrounds to think about how we can develop
this field of positive psychology, that we can benefit from what’s already known invarious disciplines, such as from clinical psychology for example.

And also have a little bit of background in health. So for example, my previous job
before I came to the Centre for Positive Psychology, I was Head of Research at
Wellbeing and Resilience Centre at the South Australian Health and Medical ResearchInstitute. So our Research Centre was really interested in applying positive psychology

27across the community at large scale, so for example the whole of the department ofcorrections for example or the whole of a very large company, or a whole collection ofschool systems, so to very different people, such as the elderly or with reallydisengaged youth. Also the sectors of society which were interested in applying theskills that come out of positive psychology. So I have some experience and translationof the science and the application of it to the real world.

When do I get time to do some research? Well, one area of research I’m particularly
fascinated by is around conceptualizing just what well-being is. I started off this areaof research by looking at what teachers and lawyers thought of by the concept of wellbeing. We used a particular type of analysis called Prototype Analysis, which is a bitof a mixed methods approach where you ask a group of teachers, say for example,“when you think of the concept of well-being, what things come to mind you?”. And
then they free list the things that they think about when they think about the term “wellbeing.” They might say, “the relationships, physical health, feeling valued”, whatever
they say, there’s no boundaries on what they can say. They list what they think about
when they think about the term well-being.

So you first have a bunch of people listing what they think of when they think of wellbeing. Then you go to a different group of teachers and say, “we’ve previously asked
people like you what they think about when they think about well-being”. What aresome things that they associate with the wellbeing? Now, we ask the second group ofpeople to quantify that. We say “think about each one of these terms and think about
how central or peripheral it is to your concept of well-being”. We get some quantitative

28

ratings then of how important say, for example, physical health is, which points to howteachers conceptualize well-being. Based on all of those ratings we can rank concepts
as being more or less central to well-being.

Then we do a third step, almost like a validation check, where we go to another groupof teachers. We make case study scenarios based on the components that they previous
reported as being very central. For example, if the teachers see essential to well-being
elements such as physical health, or feeling valued, or having a sense of meaning inlife, we say, okay, we’ll create a case and say, John works at factory and really
important for his well-being is feeling valued, getting good exercise, and having a senseof meaning in life. We write a bit of a case description of that, but we’ll also write acase description using the elements that were more peripheral, or not essential, toteachers’ conceptions of well-being.

So we would then have two case studies. One with essential components and one withmore peripheral components, and we’ll ask that third group of people which of thesecases is more representative to you of your concept of well-being when you read it andthink about it. That’s a kind of a validation check. So we’ll be doing this kind researchwith different types of groups now with teachers, with lawyers, with adolescents, withnurses, and what we’re finding is different groups have vastly different conceptions ofwhat well-being is, and particularly what is important and more essential to thecomponent of well-being.

29Just to give you some examples: for nurses, feeling valued is really important and thesocial aspects of well-being. For lawyers, not so much at all. They’re more about
individualistic notions as you’d imagine, about control and autonomy and things likethat. For adolescents, their conception of well-being is very different to adultconceptions of well-being. Say for example, having a pet is really important toadolescents.

We’re also finding that there’s differences across socioeconomic groups as well. In ourstudy on adolescents we found that kids that go to schools of low socioeconomic status,
such as in poor neighborhoods versus kids going to higher neighborhoods, had different
conceptions of well-being in the sense that the things that were more essential werevery different. That tells us that this idea that you need to have your basic needs meet
is somewhat true, but it also gives us quite an insight into when we’re developing or
implementing well-being in schools - you probably want to tailor that and contextualize
it depending on the type of school you’re going to.

This whole idea or area of actually figuring out what people mean by “well-being” tostart with, how they define it, and how that leads into the model of well-being andalignment with their definitions of wellbeing, that then you can use in an assessment
tool, an alignment with both that model of well-being and that definition of well-being,
as a basis to collect data to evaluate programs in a school for example. The whole ideaof conceptualizations of well-being is the starting point of that journey of increasing
well-being.

30

That’s one area that I’m really keen to do more research on and to collect more samples
of different types of people and in different age groups and in different cultures as well.

Another area that I’m really interested in is ethics. As I said, I have a bit of a backgroundin philosophy and applied ethics and ethical theory, and you may or may not know thatwe’ve recently published the first ethical guidelines for practice in the field of positive
psychology. I would love for this to be translated into Japanese; I don’t think we haveanyone to do this at present.

That was a very interesting, and more challenging, project than we initially thought. It
took us a total of close to 3 years to do, because we went through quite some effort tocollaborate across the field with all the key stakeholders in positive psychology to gettheir views about what kinds of ethical guidelines would be useful for practitioners.
Both at the moment, but also for building the field into more of a professional stance.
Thinking forward about credentialing and maybe a possibility for positive psychology
in the future, but you can’t register credentials as a psychologist if you don’t have a setof ethical guidelines as a basis to practice from. It’s one small step in a pathway of how
positive psychology is professionalizing, developing these guidelines which is why wethought it was a worthwhile effort to do.

So that’s another area of interest. Another one that I’m really interested in is and thiswhole idea of well-being and public policy. A colleague of mine, Dan Weijers, and I
started the conference series called “Well-being and Public Policy” quite a few years
ago and we’ve had three of these conferences so far, specifically looking at how well-31

being science more broadly, and how views into public policy and practice, and someof the debates around the extent to which positive psychology and psychology itself
can play a role in actual development of public policy beyond economics. The fourth
conference in that series will be held next year, 2020, in Melbourne on the 4th and 5thof December and we’re lucky enough to host it. We’re really thinking about how we
can meet the notions of social change that are forefront of people’s minds and also wellbeing science, how we can take on these really big challenges of our day that are really
forefront of society, and what can well-being science say about those and how toconnect these things and then feed that into social policy.

We’re looking at the mix of people and trying to bring the right people together to talkabout that. They can learn from examples of what other countries have been doing
about infusing well-being into public policy, and I guess myself being a New Zealander
originally we have quite a good story to tell about New Zealand developing the world’s
first well-being budget and how that came about through many years of debate aroundhow the economic models could include livability and aspects of well-being and how
the government agencies could assist well-being at national level and things like that.
So this is the area well-being and public policy.

The other area that I’m really interested in is that as this field of Positive psychology is
growing, is developing tools which practitioners can use. I’ll just talk about a few ofthese, but we’re really interested in making an impact on a scalable level. The one that
I’m currently working on, we’re calling “My Well-being Planner”. It used to be called
Personalized Well-being and Performance Planning, but it’s an idea of how can you

32introduce this concept of well-being literacy to somebody who doesn’t know anything
about it just yet, and get them to think about what well-being means to them, so theirconceptualizing well-being, but from a stance of personalization, as well as what wellbeing means to them, and then on the basis of that, can we teach them some well-being
skills. They can align with their conception of well-being to then fit into a planning andgoal setting process. With a coach or a mentor they can work at actually building theirwell-being. This product we’re developing at present we are using with university
students. These are international students that are coming to the University of
Melbourne and so we’re also interested in aligning it with their academic performanceplanning.

The same kinds of skills about planning for academic performance and we think are
relevant planning for your personal well-being as well, and as we develop this productthat we’ve been iterating and testing over time, and now we’re rolling it out andimproving it. This is just one example of a product that we can offer to practitioners
about how to increase the well-being of international students for example, but it’s also
a product that’s not just relevant to international students. It could be relevant to allsorts of markets, this idea of thinking about what well-being is and personalizing it to
yourself and learning skills about actually planning for and monitoring it, increasing
your well-being over time.

Another product that I’m really keen to work more on is about how we assess wellbeing. At the moment, the majority of our assessments are surveys and the majority ofthem also are very cognitive. They ask you about your evaluations of your well-being;33

your life satisfaction. To a lesser extent, they also ask about emotions, but very few ofthem, a very low percentage ask about your behaviors, what you actually do. We know
very little about what happy people actually do and almost none of the assessment use
physiology either, although there is an increasing trend to, but at a practical level not
many assessments do that.

Most of our assessment base is really survey based in a cognitive format, but when you
talk to large organizations and schools they find they’re very impractical, because
they’ve got to take the students out of class and to have time for assessments, and thestudents find it a little bit boring. There’s all these impediments to assessing well-being
in that way. My challenge is really “how can we assess a student’s well-being without
having to ask them to do a survey.” We’re working with another team at the Universityof Melbourne in the computer science area, about how we can ask kids to tell us a story
about what they want in their life, and actually assess their facial recognition, assess
their intonation and voice, actually look at the terms they use in their language and put
all these variables together, which is a huge challenge to create a well-being assessment.
It’s a very lofty goal to investigate and that’s going to take a long time, but that’s where
I’d love to see assessment go, that non-intrusive kind of assessment where we could
monitor and track somebody’s well-being, but also protect proactively dips in wellbeing in school kids, so when they become depressed or suicidal, we’d be able tocapture that change just from facial recognition and other things – their voice intonation.

And another project I’m really interested in. There are a couple of books I’m started towrite at the moment as well. So ones on a positive university, and we are in34

collaboration with some friends at George Mason University in America. We want to
put together the first textbook on what we know about a positive university today. So
some good case examples of other universities around the world that have done reallywell and rolling out and implementing well-being science in the university at different
scales. Whole of university scale, such as that TecMilenio in Mexico or George Masonin the USA, even here in Australia, we do some parts of well-being across the whole
university, like a strengths assessment, for example, but there’s also a lot of really good
examples of things that are more compartmentalize at a faculty level or at a department
level or at a discipline level.

This will be a book on case studies of what people have done that’s really worked, butalso providing some good tools and frameworks and structures for universities whowant to move into this space. So there’s a growing demand, but there’s little knowledge
about how to proceed in this area. That’s one book. Another book that I’m working on
is about more novel and unusual ways to improve your well-being. As positive
psychology is developed there’s some pretty central and commonly known positive
psychological interventions or positive psychology interventions, such as three goodthings and use your strengths and so forth, but there’s a whole bunch of other ways toimprove your well-being that are less well-known and they can be useful.

Just to give you one example. I think discomfort can be a pathway to well-being andso rather than living in a society where we use technology to avoid discomfort, I think
discomfort can actually build part of your capability to experience well-being. This
book will be around about 12 or 13 different ideas about how to improve your well-35

being that are not so well recognized, but there is actually an evidence based scientific
literature around, however it’s unknown largely to the positive psychology in wellbeing science community.

Masaya Kobayashi
My first question concerns ethical guidelines. Could you please explain a bit about
philosophical ideas behind ethical guidelines? This is my first question.

Aaron Jarden
I remember the development of those guidelines. This is a project which took almost
three years in collaboration with collogues from the University of East London, Canada,
New Zealand, but I think we started off with philosophical discussions.

Masaya Kobayashi
Okay. Let me ask the next question. You introduced your views regarding policies in
New Zealand and Australia. Could you explain what has been happening regarding
well-being in public policy in Australia and New Zealand?

Aaron Jarden
Yes. We wrote a book chapter on the policies of wellbeing in Australia and New
Zealand. Firstly, we looked to see what of all the public policy, what was actually wellbeing oriented, what’s the policy that New Zealand and Australia developed and were
implementing, what relations did it have with well-being and we found that the two36

countries have slightly different importance’s placed on well-being. Ｗe looked at how
the term well-being was used in policy, but it’s really interesting to see the trajectoryof New Zealand in particular, it was probably about 8 years ago or 9 years ago now
where we convinced Statistics New Zealand to really focus on measuring well-being at
an international level. They included more items specifically around psychologicalwell-being, and from that, because they’re in such close collaboration with the
Department of Treasury, it started conversations around their Living Standards
Framework (a kind of wellbeing framework) and how they’re related to the same inAustralia who was also updating their well-being framework.

We still got the ideas going. Then we’ve got them talking to the treasury people. Then
we got them interested in the idea of well-being and thinking more about it and thenthey put out a little bit in this framework with an example of well-being in it and at thatpoint in the story, it takes a little bit of a left turn, because the economists hijacked alittle bit and brought it back to what they thought was more important, which was lessof the psychological well-being aspect, but nonetheless that carried on for a few years
and then they realized the advice we originally gave them about doing that wouldn’t bethat helpful and recently they’ve gone back to more of a psychological well-being
understanding, which is good to see. But in New Zealand, that all lead the basis forwhen a Labor Government got elected to really focus on well-being.

They’ve delivered the world’s first well-being budget where all the ministers andgovernment departments have to justify what they want to spend money on in relation37

to how it impacts psychological well-being, which is a bit of a world first which also
made the ministers and the different silos of government collaborate, all with the viewof intergenerational well-being in mind. How are the things that that section of
government want to do, how do they impact somebody’s well-being, and so all of thatcan be traced back and getting those early policy people interested in thinking about
and measuring, and actually how do they make some of this work in practice. In thatregard the treasury really had an essential role to play and actually pushing a lot of us
alone, which was really good to see, but yeah that book chapter was more about
surveying what was happening and seeding new ideas for “why can’t we do more ofthis?”

Masaya Kobayashi
Thank you.

Aaron Jarden
I just have another couple of projects which may be interesting, but one that I’m
particularly interested in which relates to the positive university space is about Ph.D.
students, in particular and helping them complete their Ph.D. journey. The statistics
around Ph.D. completions are very poor and a very small percentage of people that start
actually complete, and lot of reason is that they could benefit from some increased
resilience and we can teach resilience skills, but they could also benefit from increased
well-being. Actually helping them enjoy the process and pathway of their studies. We
can then capitalize on the knowledge that they learn more after their Ph.D. Rather than38

finish the Ph.D. experience with not wanting anything to do with it, but actually they
enjoy the experience a lot more then that knowledge translates better to society. They’ll
want to stay working in the field and use that knowledge and translate it. We’ve
developed a specific program to increase the resilience skills and the well-being skills,
particularly around the relational skills with supervisors and so forth, so that we canincrease the completion rates, but also enjoy the experience more for better knowledgetranslation benefit at the end of the day. We’re just at the end of making that particular
product as well – just another example.

Male Speaker
Please tell us about your research on adolescents.

Aaron Jarden
I think if you take a lifespan development perspective, young kids, so these areadolescents around the age of 11, 12. They haven’t had the life experiences and they
haven’t built a lot of the capabilities just yet. A lot of what they experience as wellbeing is really from their own perspective and from their peer group and this sort ofmarries with other psychology literatures, like values would be a really good example.
The values lifespan literature shows young people start off with “hedonistic” values
and as they go through life they end up with more “security”, “tradition” kind of values.
They value things like tradition much more at the end of life they do with the start oftheir life.

39

I think what we saw with how adolescent’s conceptualized well-being was things thatwould promote positive emotions or the feedback loops, and also talking about theimportance of social relationships and the importance of sense the purpose and meaning,
now kids don’t say that at all. They are more interested in things like having a pet,because that provides them with an instant positive emotions kind of experience. I
think it’s a combination of they just haven’t had the life experiences yet to develop a
broad conception of what builds their well-being and they just haven’t had the time todo so. That’s my guess. I mean it’s an empirical question, so it’s certainly worth testing,but that’s my guess.

And the other part of this is if you look at the well-being literature, it never asks young
people about well-being. It really imposes emotional well-being on them. We see bigbodies like the UN and the OECD saying, they’re calling for better recognition ofyoung people, yet I think they are sophisticated enough to define and conceptualize
well-being themselves, so why are we pushing policies on them that involved ideas ofwell-being which are not their own? It’s an area that needs a lot more effort and work.

Male Speaker
I am very interested. I am involved in youth development, and sometimes I feel like I
am also teaching to youth adolescents and senior high school students. It is very
important for youth adolescents to face some hardships for psychological development
and for making them more mature. They can avoid this kind of hardship if we teachthem resilience skills, before they experience adversity. However, I sometimes hesitate
to do so because I believe that they need to experience hardship for better growth.

40

Aaron Jarden
Yeah. It’s a great question. I can add two examples to that. One is, at a previous Centre
that I was involved with, they did a really good study on what was called “free range
play and kids.” They went into a primary school and they just took away all the rulesin the school. The kids could then run as fast as they like. They could climb trees ashigh as they like. They could use weapons and fight and really the emphasis was about
taking away rather than imposing new rules and regulations around safety, and thenthey measured everything quite specifically and what they found was that the kids had
less injuries, they were happier, they focused better at school, and had a huge impact
on their physical health, because they were much more active. This was over a wholeyear.

This pilot program was hugely successful, making these kids play on their own terms
in an autonomous way that they wanted to play. They also put things into the schoolthat helped them, like design thinking. Rather than static play structures, they took
those away and just put loose tires and the bunches of trees and now just let the kids becreative in a kind of free-range way and so this was hugely successful. It was very hard
to convince the parents though. It’s a bit like some of the literature on playgrounds. As
soon as you put a safety net under the playground it will have twice the rate of injuries.
Kids are really actually good at estimating the risk, and part of learning is actuallyfollowing it and so forth, but the whole idea of this project was that it’s better to let
kids estimate and risk for those things early in life and build that resilience and those41

capabilities early, rather than a little bit later when they’re in high school and they’rerisking around sexual health or drink driving, and more dangerous things in life.

Another example, I just say is related to your question, is another project that I was
involved with disengaged youth was called “resilient futures.” So this was Adelaide,
South Australia, where they had a really big grant to identify the 850 most disengaged
youth in society. So these are all kids that have had a really hard time. They’ve got nofamily. They’ve been in jail. They’re completely disconnected from the education
system. The economists worked out that each one of those kids, if there was nointervention, would cost the society one million dollars each over the course of thelifespan, so a $850 million problem. The task of this project was to identify them andteach them well-being and resilience skills.

So given their context they needed to be more resilient because these are kids that are
sleeping under bridges, don’t have any family, don’t have any money, are focused ongetting more drugs and so forth. No matter how they work their way out of the situation,
they could benefit from being more resilient, but also they could benefit from morewell-being skills as well.

The task was “how do you teach such a person in such a context these skills?” and weworked out that actually you had to go through a support agency and teach the people
delivering the care, whether it would be healthcare or financial aid or whatever it was,these kids always had at least one connection to somebody. It was teaching that person
how to teach the well-being and resilience skills, because these kids won’t come to a42

seminar. So it was how do we teach the providers to teach the skills and in the context
of the work that they’re already doing with them, how could you infuse the skillbuilding into these conversations.

There’s a really tricky thing to do, but what we found was that the preliminary resultsfrom that was that about 56% of them had re-engaged with education at the end of the
project, which is huge, because when you can get somebody back into education whose
not been in education before, then they can have less time to get into trouble. So, it
was a hugely successful project. They actually won a Good Design Award, which is a
big award in Australia for its methodology around implementation science.

Female Speaker
I am interested in the resilience program for university students since I am working ina medical school. In Japan, students enter medical school soon after finishing their highschool, and the curriculum is very cramped and the learning environment is challenging,and some students experience psychological problems and drop out; therefore, we havejust started our resilience training program. I want to learn more about your program.

Aaron Jarden
I guess it is a two-edged sword in the sense that when you put people in a system whichis really stressful and you try and change the person in the system, you can only do somuch without actually changing the system which is reinforcing. It’s really two answers
to the question of “how can you change the system and then how can you help the43

individual?” in their system. At the University of Melbourne for example, and the
medical faculty, they decided that the system was too stressful. They stopped giving
students results in their first year. They didn’t feel that that competitive stress was
useful. This is a system’s change which had, what I understand was, a pretty positiveeffect, but on an individual level you can also teach skills around things like you’resaying, compassion and kindness and empathy, but actually their understanding ofsystems and to the extent to which they can function, what it is, is also a really goodfirst step, especially since medical students in particularly, they have really highexpectations.

We backtrack from our “theory of change” perspective, the particular skills based on
the literature that would be helpful and create a protocol around that first. We really
identify which particular skills will help them through this process, but your points also
are pertinent in the sense of every academic discipline is slightly different. For example,
Medicine is very hierarchical, very competitive, if we’re talking about creative arts
we’re talking about a different discipline and so some careers beyond academia arereally known to have different stresses. Veterinary science for example, they don’t talkto lot to people, they talk to animals, dentists are around anxiety all the time. We havesome reasonably good insights to different professions, the have and build well-being
for different reasons. So that has to be part of when you’re teaching somebody, who isdoing Ph.D. on particular discipline, feeding some of this knowledge into it, because
they’re going to go beyond these studies through a discipline or an area where we know
where we can intervene, be there for their well-being by doing some things rather thanothers.

44

Male Speaker
I am involved in some of the resilience training programs for medical school students
and listen to the discussion surrounding resilience. How about the relationship between
resilience training and general well-being teaching?

Aaron Jarden
The other part of this is that you cannot ignore either, because the empirical literature
just shows resilience and well-being broadly defined and correlates to point five (0.5).
It’s really hard to have high well-being without some resilience, or to be very resilient
without also having high wellbeing. So that’s the importance of teaching both and notjust one.

Masaya Kobayashi
Prof. Oades, it is a bit difficult to translate systems informed positive psychology into
Japanese, so could you explain its meaning?

Lindsay Oades
A little bit of background for your entertainment. At one stage we were calling it
positive systems science. However, we found that was too big because systems scienceis a very big area, so we reduced our ambition to look at what we were really doing andwhat we were really doing was informing positive psychology and we're trying to use
systems science, to learn from system science and how could we improve positive45

psychology by taking more systems approach. That's how the term came to be, but toanswer your question directly it's positive psychology using system science concepts,
so 'informed' means there has been use of the concepts from system science, how theytranslate that I am not sure.

3.Reformulation of Communitarianism and Social Systems
theory as a Systems Informed Positive Psychology (Masaya
Kobayashi)
Masaya Kobayashi
All right, thanks very much and I think this is very important paper.
In my presentation today, I will first explain the basic points that I have alreadydiscussed in the past three IPPA Congress various sessions. Subsequently, I will
express my own ideas, which were inspired by systems informed psychology, andreformulate my own political philosophy into this kind of system theory.

My first presentation at the IPPA Congress (2013) put forth an Aristotelianinterpretation of positive psychology.

I dealt with the epistemological question of positive psychology. This was also referred
to in the paper of the systems informed positive psychology, given that positive
psychologists often argue that it is science, so it is not normative or prescriptive.
However, people who are interested in applying positive psychology practically believe

46

that this is obviously science, but it also facilitates happiness. What is the difference
between such facilitation and prescriptive or normative science? That is the question to
be considered (Figure1).

Figure1 Epistemological Question for Positive Psychology

I think this is related to a somewhat difficult philosophical question about the usual
understanding of modern science, which differentiates strictly between normativearguments and empirical descriptions. Although Aristotle is obviously considered asjust a normative philosopher, he put forth the idea of “practical science” (Figure2).
From the standpoint of such a classical philosophy, there can be some coexistence or
symbiosis between normative philosophy and descriptive science in ethics and politicalscience. From this perspective, I characterized that approach as “philosophicalscience”, empirical science inspired by philosophy (Figure3). Although there is a wide
gap between science and philosophy, we constructed a bridge between them in positive
psychology and studies of happiness. This gap has since been decreasing.
Figure2 Aristotle’s Classification of the Sciences

Figure3 Concept of Philosophical Science

47

Then, we can think of philosophical science as a science led by philosophical ideas sothat it can include both normative and descriptive aspects. Aristotle classifies sciences
into three types. One is theoretical science, which includes physics or chemistry, inmodern science. The second is practical sciences, which comprise ethics and politics,
and these two are closely linked in Aristotelian thought. This science is not precisely
science, but a rough outline of practical matters.

The third is productive sciences, such as poetics and technology. It is better to regard
positive psychology as a practical and empirical science that revived the tradition ofAristotle’s classical idea of practical science because the scientific findings give us notstrict laws but law-like tendencies concerning the human mind because they allow
exceptions and variances, and are influenced by cultural matters or factors(Figure4).
Figure4 Positive Psychology as a Practical Empirical Science48

From statistical analyses positive psychology discovers certain law-like tendencies, but
I think they are not strict or precise laws, because in general natural sciences, we think,
we determined that strict scientific causality is expressed by mathematical laws, but
most positive psychology findings obviously depend upon statistical analyses, which
identify tendencies.

We can understand the reasons for some failures of mathematical or theoreticalarguments in positive psychology. Barbara Fredrikson withdrew the number of positive
ratios 3:1 because some people argued against the mathematical reasoning of her coresearcher. There is surely a kind of statistical tendency, but the ratio is not necessarily
3:1, and she revised her argument. In the last IPPA Congress (2019),

Sonja

Lyubomirsky publicly revised her argument on the happiness chart. The happinesschart originally indicates the influence of set points of genes, circumstances, andintentional activities

as 50%, 10%, and 40%, respectively, but she said that the

numbers are approximate, not precise. I think that this kind of recent development of
positive psychology signifies that it is a practical empirical science that indicates law-49

like tendencies. They are not precise scientific laws, but have rough scientifictendencies.

From that kind of view, we can integrate a normative or facilitative aspect anddescriptive or scientific aspect. From this perspective, we can introduce insights of theclassical political philosophy into contemporary science. Political philosophy has beendifferentiated from natural sciences in the modern era, but now we can bridge the gap
between political philosophy and a positive psychology perspective.

In Figure5 “political philosophy” and Figure 6 “Positive political philosophy”, I
indicate more simply the relationship implied in the previous chart. Communitarianism
is a challenging political philosophy of liberalism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism.
The latter three are at present the main political philosophies in the contemporary world.
I

depict

these

along

the

hedonic/eudemonic

dimension

and

the

individualistic/collective dimension.
In Figure 5 “configuration of political philosophy,” there is utilitarianism in the lower
right quadrant. This is known by the famous quote “maximum number of maximum
happiness,” which is based on the hedonic concept. Simultaneously, this signifies theaggregate of individual pleasure of happiness, and it is also situated on the collectivisticside.

In contrast, simple “egoism” is both individualistic and hedonic. This is somehow
associated with the basic idea of contemporary mainstream economy, which is basedon the concept of utility. This is close to the hedonic concept of individual interest. In

50contrast, there are other current thoughts that are associated with virtue ethics. These
are communitarianism and individualistic perfectionism in, the upper half of this chart.
Communitarianism emphasizes the importance of ethical dimensions such as virtue,and emphasizes the importance of the collective dimension in politics, as is seen invarious communities. There are also some thoughts that are differentiated from
communitarianism in that they only emphasize the importance of individual virtues,
and they regard the communal or collective dimension. This is an individualistic
perfectionism.
Figure5 Configuration of Political Philosophy

Figure6 Positive Political Philosophy

51

Figure 6 “positive political philosophy” classifies political philosophies by using thenegative/positive as well as hedonic/eudemonic dimensions. This is related to thepositive/negative liberty of I. Berlin mentioned in Prof. Oades’ presentation today.
Liberalism and libertarianism mainly emphasize the importance of preservation or
defense of individual rights as against the menace of the state power. It is the politicalphilosophy against the negative political power. It can be regarded as parallel topsychology as usual. I think this is a “political philosophy as usual”.

In contrast, communitarianism and utilitarianism mainly focus on the positive side.
Communitarianism emphasizes the concept of the common good, and it is a positive
idea, as well as the utilitarian maximization of happiness. These two are different fromthe angle of hedonic/eudemonic, but both are positive.

In the past, political scientists sometimes turned their attention to psychology, but
psychology, as usual, focused on the negative side. However, now, positive psychology
focuses on the positive side, so communitarians can see the importance of positive
psychology. I think communitarianism can be described as a positive politicalphilosophy.

From this angle, I see the systems principles that Prof. Oades’ paper refers to, and I
think the systems informed positive psychology is quite in tune with communitarianism
because there are similarities between systems principles and communitarianism(Figure7). For example, the “share purpose” mentioned in the paper is quite close to
the common good. “Interconnectedness” is always emphasized in communitarianism52

in concepts of togetherness, mutual help, and so on. The systems principle includes the“boundaries” of principle, and communitarianism always perceives the importance ofboundaries, because boundaries of communities or their membership are important, forexample, for public welfare. Modern contemporary political thinkers such asuniversalistic liberalism and postmodernists often attack communitarianism in that
communitarianism supports the boundaries, which implies the exclusion of outsiders,a kind of hegemonic and repressive assault against minorities.

However, mainstream communitarianism, namely, liberal communitarianism,emphasizes the importance of the public sphere. The public sphere not only includes
the common element, but also plural and individual elements in society. I think theconception of the public is also important in communitarian thought in that it includes
both elements of individuality and communality. “Self-organization” is also importantfrom a communitarian perspective because modern thought usually emphasizes theimportance of human rationality and actions based on rationality. In contrast,
communitarians see the natural emergence of various communities, including families
and local communities. Then, self-organization is in tune with communitarianism
against modern thought which explains society only by human rational artificiality.

53

Figure7 Similarity between Systems Principles and Communitarianism

There are also similarities between philosophical assumptions of systems informed
positive psychology and communitarianism (Figure8). For example, “Inter-being” isalso a very important concept, which I sometimes call this relatedness in the context ofcommunitarianism. Regarding these points, the epistemological and politicalassumption of the paper is quite in tune with communitarian public philosophy. For
example, the paper refers to “rights with responsibility”. It is an important phrase,
especially in liberal communitarianism. “Embeddedness” and “value -driven” are also
important in the arguments of communitarianism.
Figure8 Similarity between the Philosophical Assumptions and Communitarianism

54

Figure9 Basic Subjects of Positive Psychology

Figure10 shows the basic outline of his theory. A behavioral organism refers to a body.
Personality systems include the psychological dimension. Social systems include
politics and economy, and cultural systems are concerned with values and symbols,
and there are interactions between these systems. This framework is still useful, but
Parsons obviously assumed the psychology of that age, that is, psychology as usual in
the 1960s. It focuses on basic concepts of needs and motivation.

Figure10 Parsonian Theory55

He also contrived the pattern variables of actions, and finally reached AGIL diagrams(Figure11). These are the four spheres: A signifies adaption, G indicates goal
attainment, I is integration, and L corresponds to latent values and management ofattention or stress. These functional aspects of the system are developed into economy,
politics, social control, and education or culture. The four spheres are subdivided into
various institutions in the contemporary world.
Figure11 AGIL Diagram

Now with regard to the philosophical perspective of public philosophy (Figure12),
there are self, others, and the world. This is not the atomistic world, and there arevarious relationships between them, and I assume inter-subjectivity, equal to “interbeing” above. Obviously, these are situated within the framework of time and space.

Figure12 Philosophical Perspective of Public Philosophy

56

I try to revise Parsons’ framework based oncontemporary positive psychology

insights (Figure13). The first revision is the relationship between behavioral organisms
and the personality system. Parsons mainly considered the causal influence off
behavioral organisms on the personality system. However, now we understand that
there is a cross-relationship between mind and body as philosophical interactionism
suggests. Body affects the mind and mind affects the body. Causality is two-way, notone way. In the personality system, the mind consists of intellect (cognitive component),
will (intentional component), and emotion (affective component), and each interacts
with the other.

These systems are interacting with the cultural system and the social system. The
Parsonian system emphasized socialization, that is, the causality that social and cultural
systems influence people. This is the process of internalization and socialization, but
sociologist Anthony Giddens criticized the idea, nothing that there are two ways of
causality. The other causality is that people reflect upon themselves and interpret or57change their value systems so that they can sometimes influence or change the cultural
system and the social system. There are two ways around. This is the basic idea of thestructuration theory. The idea of socialization is basically in tune with
communitarianism, but his ideas of structuration correspond to the recent developmentof communitarian thought. Thus, a communitarian perspective is also indicated in the
figure.

Figure13 Reconstruction of Social Systems Theory

Figure14 is based on Talcott Parsons’ theory of voluntary action. He reviewed
sociological development from its modern beginning and attempted to integrate
idealism and empiricism or utilitarianism into the theory of voluntary action. His pointis that humans are not only affected by cultural and social systems but can also wish
for his/her own voluntary action, taking into account his/her own worldview or value
system. I think this idea is in tune with the idea of present positive psychology, forexample, indicated by Lyubomirsky’s happiness chart. Part of the set range of genes
indicates the ratio of the degree of happiness, caused by the biological condition. There58

are also parts of circumstances and voluntary control. Although she withdrew thenumber of ratios as I said, three elements can influence the level of happiness of theperson. All these parts are quite in tune with the framework of voluntary actions in
Parson’s theory. We can arrange or reformulate the original Parsons’ idea based on theimpact of positive psychology. In contemporary social philosophy, the idea ofcommunicative action developed by J. Habermas and others, is also important, since
because it is related to the public actions inspired by the works of H. Arendt. We haveincluded these aspects in this section.

Figure14 Reconstruction of Theory of Voluntary Action

Figure15 demonstrates a chart of using the PERMA model of Martin Seligman:positive emotion, meaning, relation, engagement, and accomplishment. I think thesecan be considered as the association between humans and others, that between thehuman self and the physical world, in the past, present, and future.

59

I add autonomy to this chart as well as cooperation and community or (pro-)sociability.
From a communitarian perspective, both autonomy and cooperation are very important.
I think the coexistence of these is indispensable in the concept of publicness. I canreformulate these concepts in the framework of positive public philosophy.

Figure15 Philosophical Perspective and PERMA

I reformulate the Parsons’ pattern variables in his social systems theory in Figure16,
using the framework of time/space and others. Although I omitted a detailed
explanation of this, we can see some correlation between these two. I am very
impressed by “systems informed positive psychology” because it refers to the threespheres of ethics, politics, and economy. I think these are in line with my own ideas.

60

Figure16 Positive Psychology and Pattern Variables

Parsons proposed AGIL diagrams. He later came to use the word “societal community”
for the function of I(integration). This word is in tune with communitarianism. On thisground, there are sub-systems of politics, economy, and culture, corresponding to thefunction of G (goal attainment), A (adaptation), and L (latent pattern maintenance andcontrol). These three pillars can be considered based on the societal community. We
can reformulate Parsons’ AGIL diagram into this new framework. Parsons was
criticized in that he disregarded the possibility of change in systems, because his systemtheory emphasized the importance of system maintenance and control. Parsons always
viewed social systems from that angle, but from the point of public philosophy, thepossibility of change is also important, and public spheres play decisive roles indynamic moments. Then, I indicate the public spheres at the central point of Figure17,
and this can be called AGILP diagram.

61

Figure17 Flourishment of Social Systems

Figure18 indicates multi-layered societal communities local, national, and global. On
this basis, there are political, cultural, and economic systems. The political system
includes governments, the economic system consists of the market, and the cultural
system comprises religion, ethics, education, and school. There are interactions
between the three systems, as well as between these systems and societal communities.
There are families and voluntary associations in societal communities, and some ofthem, like families, are within the private sphere. Some of them, like civil associations,
are within the public sphere. Outside of the global community or various communities,
nature and environment are depicted.

62

Figure18 Multi-layered Social Systems

The important point that positive psychology can introduce into this social systems
theory is that these systems center around the Person system and there are intersections
between the system and the three systems of politics, economy, and culture. The
original Parsons theory disregarded this intersection, and recognition was very
important. Eminent philosopher Jürgen Habermas put forth the idea of the colonizationof the life world by political and economic systems, and this theory can be illustrated
in this figure. Life world is similar to the societal community.

This systems theory can be understood by the development of institutions along thevertical, horizontal, and transcended axes in the human mental space, which is close to
the social space (J. Haidt). Figure19 basically indicates the development of various
ideas, and the three sub-systems developed along these dimensions of ideas andcorresponding institutions. The vertical dimension corresponds to the political system,
the horizontal or spiritual dimension originally corresponds to the market system, thetranscendent dimension corresponds to the cultural system. There are some interactions

63between these systems. For example, the vertical dimension intersects with thetranscendent dimension as a relationship between politics and culture. Moreover, there
are differences and interactions between these dimensions within a system. For
example, there are differences in political systems. In politics, there is suppression andequilibrium among the administrative, legislative, and judiciary aspects. These aresubdivisions of the political system. This idea corresponds to the subdivision ofsystems in Parsons’ AGIL model.

Figure19 Mental Space

From this angle, we can see various historical developments in the exchange ofresources since ancient times. For example, as Figure20 indicates, in the primitive
societies, there is a flow of resources of reciprocity between equal subjects and also a
circulated flow of resources. Anthropologists explained these issues by the terms,
restricted exchange and generalized exchange (C. Lévi-Strauss), respectively. These
are two modes of horizontal exchange, and they are closely intertwined with religious
or moral ideas and customs along the transcendent dimension. In addition, anothermode arose with the birth of chiefdom and kingdom in ancient times: the center of64

power appeared, and it redistributed resources collected from laypersons by power (K.
Polanyi). This can be regarded as a generalized vertical exchange.

Figure20 Multi-dimensional Flow of Resources

I think Parsons’ social systems theory can be developed by introducing positive
psychology as a systems-informed positive psychology. This year, I talked about
positive political psychology at the IPPA. Now I have realized that positive political
psychology can be included in the whole idea of systems informed positive psychology.
As demonstrated in Figure 21, subjective political emotion, individual political traits,
and political institutions are the three elements of political psychology, similar to thethree elements in positive psychology in general. Political well-being can beconceptualized in parallel with general well-being; political traits refer to politicalvirtues and strengths; and political institutions correspond to political systems.
Likewise, we can develop political PERMA on the basis of the PERMA model:
political well-being can be measured by political positive emotion, political65

engagement, political relationship, political meaning, and political accomplishment, asshown in Figure22.

Figure21 Subjects of Positive Political Psychology

Figure22 Political Well-being and Political PERMA

Figure23 indicates the relationship between political system and political well-being.
Now, I am conducting research on political input, that is, an election. Some positive
psychologists found a surprising relationship between election results and subjective
well-being in the American Presidential election in 2016 that President Trump won.
They found that low levels of well-being in districts are positively related to vote66

change toward the Republican side, that is, the Trump camp. I think this is a very
important finding in political studies, and I have conducted research on the Japaneseelection of the National Diet in the summer of this year. We have not completed theanalysis yet, but it seems that we have identified some correlation between
psychological well-being and election results as well. I think there are various possibleof relationship between psychological well-being and politics in general.

Figure23 Political System and Well-being

I also conducted empirical research on Japanese food companies. I conductedempirical research on the relationship between psychological factors and performance–
the increase in annual sales-by using various questionnaires, including PERMA andworkplace PERMA developed by M. Kern in Melbourne University. I am afraid that I
had to shorten the questionnaires, but anyway, we could determine some correlation
between the psychological factors and performance of changes in annual sales. That
performance can be attributed to the level of well-being.
I also used the workplace PERMA. Although there is some correlation, the association
between workplace PERMA and performance of shops was lower than that between

67

PERMA and performance. I think this is interesting. General well-being is an
influential factor on performance, at least in this study.

Similarly, I think that we can research the relationship between general well-being andpolitical well-being, and between general well-being and organizational or economic
well-being. Such research can be considered as regards multiple well-being, whichmeans interpersonal, organizational, community, and so on.

These are the basic conceptualization inspired by systems-informed positive
psychology.

Lindsay Oades
How does positive psychology add to a person’s system that is not already inpsychology?

Masaya Kobayashi
Parsonian social systems theory refers to “psychology as usual”. Positive psychology,
we can introduce the positive elements of a human or a person’s system and positiveelements in the cultural, political, and economic systems. This is actually natural fromsocial science perspective, but seeing the political system through the lens of
psychology, research always to focuses on the negative side. For example, the theoriesof the psychological basis of fascism or authoritarianism were developed by Adorno

68and Fromm after the Second World War, and mainstream political psychology hasoften focused on negative phenomena such as conflicts or some kind of exclusion since
then.

Obviously, this perspective is very important in considering the present right-wing
populism, but from that angle there can be little positive vision for politics in the future.
Using those positive elements, we can reformulate the conception of political andeconomic system. Mainstream economics is similar to the idea of the maximization of
the happiness or utility and this is the utilitarian tradition. However, for example, itwould be better to examine personal strengths when considering the possibility ofenterprises. This is in tune with some trends in economic and management theories.
These are directions I would like to develop.

Lindsay Oades
I also wonder about fundamental assumptions about human nature, which are often
discussed in psychology and various psychological theories. Could you define a
positive in terms of assumptions about human nature?

Masaya Kobayashi
I think this is a big challenge in philosophy. In this presentation, I only reformulated
the social systems theory, inspired by positive psychology. Positive psychology’s
perception of human beings is quite different from that of Freudian psychology andbehavioralism.

69

From a philosophical perspective, I think the development of positive psychology is inline with the classical philosophical idea of Aristotle. For example, Seligman
frequently uses the word flourishing rather than happiness, and the former is very close
to the Aristotelian conception of eudemonia. This is sometimes translated as happiness,but flourishing is a better translation, because from the Aristotelian view, there arepotential ideas or forms that can be realized as flourishing. Thus, a positive philosophy
signifies the flourishment of immanent human potentiality inherent in himself/herself.

This is a very basic conception of Aristotelian philosophy. Seligman also suggested
that there can be a kind of scientific explanation of the calling. This is also in line with
the Aristotelian ideas of eudaimonia. Communitarianism introduced such an
Aristotelian teleological conception into social sciences, but the introduction of
teleological conception is restricted to social and political spheres because, for example,
we can see the purpose of human institutions such as companies, schools, or
universities. However, the present communitarians do not talk about the teleologicalconception of human beings or nature.

Then, a positive can be defined by the purpose of institutions in communitarian theories.
Moreover, I think the development of positive psychology is in tune with theAristotelian teleological conception of human beings. I think the development of
positive psychology is in this direction.

70

Lindsay Oades
Is the teleological conception of a human being what the literature calls purpose in life?

Masaya Kobayashi
Aristotle said that people have the potential or capability. For example, a genius
musician in his childhood has potential to become a excellent musician. He obviously
has to endeavor to develop his capabilities. It would be the realization of purpose inlife for him to become a musician through effort.

In contrast, I myself have no potentiality toward great musicians in childhood.
Therefore, there can be some difference in potentiality between persons, even in theirchildhood. Obviously, this is a bit too rigid conception of human teleology since it is
the classical idea but the idea, of flourishment or using our virtue and personal strengths
is quite in tune with the classical philosophical idea.

Lindsay Oades
This is the character strength. In terms of the bridge between your model andcommunitarianism, is character development the main link?

Masaya Kobayashi
Yes. This is quite important because the classical conception was accompanied byvirtue ethics. I think positive psychology revives this tradition to present psychology.
This is one of the reasons why I became very interested in positive psychology.

71

Appendix:
Examination of the Linkage between Subjective Well-being andSustainable Development Goals as Objective Indicators 4
Hikari Ishido
This study conducts a basic examination of the linkage between subjective well-being
and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Sustainable Development Goals) as
objective indicators. I majored in development economics and used to work for theUnited Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (United Nations Development
Programme), which was responsible for the Human Development Index, whichmeasures the degree of development, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)(Millennium Development Goals), which are based on the concept of humandevelopment. The MDGs had a target period from 2000 to 2015. They were succeededby the SDGs in 2015, which set specific goals for human development against thebackground of global environmental issues and with even greater consideration forsustainability.

There are 17 SDGs, namely:(1) No poverty, (2) Zero Hunger, (3) Good Health and Well-being, (4) Quality
Education, (5) Gender Equality, (6) Clean Water and Sanitation, (7) Affordable andClean Energy, (8) Decent Work and Economic Growth, (9) Industry, Innovation andInfrastructure, (10) Reduction of Inequality, (11) Sustainable Cities and Communities,(12) Responsible Consumption and Production, (13) Climate Action, (14) Life under
Water, (15) Life on Land, (16) Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, (17) Partnerships
4

This article was translated into English (from the original Japanese) in collaboration with Ms. Kei
Igarashi (Chiba University).

72

for the Goals.

These goals are further divided into 169 individual goals (targets). Further, the idea of
human-centered development (human development) is at the heart of these multiple
individual goals. In other words, while economic development is considered primarily
focused on improving the functionality of the economic system (i.e., the system outsidehuman beings), human development is a goal for the greater fulfillment of the innerlives of human beings. Further, we cannot directly observe the inner lives of humanbeings. Therefore, the above goals are also goals for factors that can be objectively
grasped and those that are, so to speak, "outside" human beings. Furthermore, thepolicies of a sovereign state must be transparent and accountable. Therefore,
quantification (indexing) is required.

Table 1 shows the overall performance of the United Nations (UN) member states interms of achieving SDGs. Countries are ranked according to their overall scores. The
overall score measures a country’s total progress toward achieving all the 17 SDGs.
The score can be interpreted as the percentage of the achievement of SDGs. A score of
100 indicates that all the SDGs have been achieved. The table shows wide disparities
across countries in terms of achieving the SDGs.
Table 1. Overall ranking of the achievement of SDGs of the UN member states
Rank

Country

Score

Rank

Country

Score

1
2

SwedenDenmark

84.72
84.56

84
85

Jamaica
Nicaragua

68.66
68.66

3
4

FinlandFrance

83.77
81.13

86
87

Suriname
Barbados

68.36
68.29

73

5

Germany

80.77

88

68.15

89
90
91

Brunei
Darussalam
JordanParaguay
Maldives

67
8NorwayAustria
Czech
Republic
Netherlands
Estonia
Belgium
Slovenia
UnitedKingdom
Ireland
Switzerland

80.76
80.7
80.58
80.37
80.06
79.96
79.8
79.79

92
93
94
95
96

Cabo VerdeSingapore
Sri Lanka
Lebanon
Nepal

67.18
67
66.88
66.68
65.93

79.38
79.35

97
98

65.85
65.76

79.2
79.17
78.76
78.4
78.34
78.19
78.11
78.1
77.73
77.65
77.52
77.51

99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110

28
29
30
31
32

New ZealandJapan
Belarus
Croatia
Korea, Rep.
CanadaSpain
PolandLatviaPortugal
Iceland
SlovakRepublic
Chile
Hungary
Italy
United States
Malta

Saudi Arabia
Trinidad andTobagoPhilippines
Ghana
Indonesia
Belize
Qatar
MyanmarHondurasCambodia
Mongolia
Mauritius
Bangladesh
South Africa

77.42
77.34
77.01
76.43
75.97

111
112
113
114
115

63.4
63.14
63.14
63.03
62.58

33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43

SerbiaCyprusCosta Rica
Lithuania
Australia
Romania
Bulgaria
IsraelThailand
Moldova
Greece

75.24
75.21
75.08
74.95
74.87
74.78
74.77
74.6
74.54
74.44
74.33

116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126

44
45
46

Luxembourg
Uruguay
Ecuador

74.31
74.28
74.26

127
128
129

47
48

Ukraine
China

74.25
73.89

130
131

Gabon
KuwaitIraq
Turkmenistan
Sao Tome andPrincipe
Lao PDR
India
Venezuela, RB
Namibia
Guatemala
Botswana
Vanuatu
Kenya
GuyanaZimbabwe
Syrian Arab
Republic
SenegalCote d'Ivoire
Republic of
The Gambia
Mauritania
Tanzania

9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

74

68.05
67.71
67.59

65.5
65.37
65.3
65.08
64.65
64.58
64.44
64.39
63.98
63.77
63.51
63.41

62.06
61.92
61.68
61.63
61.54
61.45
60.89
60.17
59.74
59.51
59.34
58.27
57.91
57.86
57.72
56.64

49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
Source:VietnamBosnia andHerzegovina
Argentina
KyrgyzRepublic
BrazilAzerbaijan
Cuba
Algeria
RussianFederation
Georgia
Iran, Islamic
Rep.
Malaysia
Peru
North
Macedonia
Tunisia
MoroccoKazakhstan
Uzbekistan
Colombia
Albania
MexicoTurkeyUnited ArabEmiratesMontenegro

73.8
73.48

132
133

RwandaCameroon

56.56
56.54

73.17
73.01

134
135

Pakistan
Congo, Rep.

56.17
55.25

72.67
72.61
72.58
72.27
71.92

136
137
138
139
140

Ethiopia
Burkina Faso
Djibouti
Afghanistan
Mozambique

55.23
55.22
54.57
54.22
54.13

71.88
71.81

141
142

LesothoUganda

54
53.49

71.76
71.76
71.4

143
144
145

BurundiEswatini
Benin

53.46
53.4
53.31

71.37
71.3
71.06
71.02
70.91
70.82
70.44
70.3
70.3

146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154

Comoros
Togo
ZambiaAngolaGuineaYemen, Rep.
Malawi
Sierra Leone
Haiti

53.07
52.7
52.67
52.59
52.47
52.33
52.2
51.91
51.7

70.19

155

51.66

Dominican
Republic
Fiji
Armenia

70.17

156

Papua
Guinea
Mali

69.95
69.86

157
158

Oman
El Salvador
Tajikistan
Bolivia
BhutanPanamaBahrainEgypt, Arab
Rep.

69.67
69.62
69.43
69.27
69.27
69.19
68.83
68.79

159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166

Development

ReportSustainable

New

51.39

Niger
50.15
Congo, Dem. 49.71
Rep.
Sudan
49.56
Nigeria49.28
Madagascar
49.14
Liberia
47.12
Somalia
46.21
Chad
43.75
South Sudan
43.66
Central38.54
AfricanRepublic
2020(sdgindex.org

andhttps://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings )The life of a human being includes psychological elements or subjective aspects.

75

Therefore, the level of happiness is supposedly often subjective. However, while
human development is also internal and subjective, its concrete goals are set withexternal indicators. Therefore, my research idea is that human development and its
concrete goal setting, the SDGs, can be used as subjects to consider human happiness.
The concept of capability (potential) is also related to that of human development,
which was proposed by economist and philosopher Amartya Sen (2004). Sen is an
Indian-born economist who was inspired to study economics in order to solve world
poverty after witnessing the sever prevalence of hunger in his country as a young boy.
While agreeing with Rawls’s philosophy, a political philosopher who aims to realizesocial justice, Sen argued that Rawls’s discussion of life was overly focused on theredistribution of goods (i.e., things), and that this perspective of developing capability
was important. Capability refers to the functions, specifically conditions such as healthand education that are necessary to lead a better life. He argued that policies such as
income redistribution alone cannot achieve human happiness, and that it is important
to develop the capability to improve happiness. Additionally, health and education are
not only internal conditions for human beings, but also factors that can be improved by
the external services provided by the society (medical services and educational
services). Moreover, the number of external services is also related to the improvementof internal happiness. Therefore, the issue of sustainable development of human society,which is considered in the SDGs proposed by the United Nations, is an important aspect
to be considered in the research of happiness.

Human beings must have inner fulfilment or happiness following their interaction withthe external environment (human existence would not be possible without external76

interaction). The concepts of human development and potentiality are therefore highly
relevant to the inner well-being of human beings. Sen proposed that well-being canonly be achieved if the three "external" factors of life expectancy, education level, andeconomic income are secured. Furthermore, the Human Development Index was
created to specifically grasp these three aspects. The SDGs are a set of goals thatconsider the sustainability of the global environment.

As mentioned above, human existence can be viewed as an integration of inner andouter (material) existence. Fig. 1 shows the immediate material and energy aspects ofhuman existence. This figure is based on the perspective of the so-called "ecologicaleconomics" (a research field that seeks to elucidate the interdependence andcoevolution of the human economy and natural ecosystems) and is a perspective thathas developed without direct linkage to the UN’s SDGs. However, the research field
can be considered in conjunction with the SDGs, which also consider environmental
factors and human development. In this diagram, human existence and activities arecharacterized by (i) endosomatic, (ii) axosomatic (middle part of the diagram), andbiophysical processes including land (including resources and energy), which support
the existence of human beings at the lower level. At lower levels, biophysical processes,
including land (including resources and energy), supposedly support the existence ofhuman beings. In other words, it is important to look at what is happening inside thehuman body (internal processes) because humans are material beings and maintain thehuman body by securing necessary food and other materials from the land. Meanwhile,human beings work on the external environment to acquire new resources (E&M in the
figure), produce food (FS), preserve the environment (ES), provide services (Activity

77B), and manufacture products (Activity A), so that they can survive more comfortably
through their "labor" activities. Hypothetically, the "purpose" of human survival is not
merely the maintenance of individual human beings, but the "creative, psychological,
and cultural activities," as indicated by Activity A in the figure, are indispensable forincreasing the degree of human development in terms of the concept of capability andare also significantly related to increasing the level of happiness. While some activities
A can be used as new ideas for activities B (service activities) and C (manufacturing
activities), it is important to note that Activity A is fundamentally self-purposeful. To
increase the degree of human development and well-being, autonomous and selfdirected Activity A must take a central stage. Further, if Activities B and C take up toomuch human time, free Activity A as part of the capability (i.e., activities that can bedone) will decrease. If activities B and C take up too much human time, activities A as
part of capability (i.e., activities that can be done) will be reduced. This means that thedegree of human development will be reduced. This could simultaneously reduce thelevel of happiness within human beings.

78

Figure 1. Human society as an evolving environmental system
Activities A(i)Endosomatic process
Activities C(Manufacturing)(A=Total human time – WS where
WS=B+C )Total human time

Activities B(Services)

Human mass
FI (for HH and SS)(ii) Exosomatic process

B&M

Useful energy
E&M
FS
ES

Mass of exosomatic (outside-humanbody) devices
ET

WastesEnvironmental loading ratio
Land area
Biophysical processes

Notes: Symbols in the figure denote the following concepts.
Activities A (creative/mental/cultural activities): Human activities necessary toguarantee adaptability (or sustainability) in the long term.
Activities B (services): Human activities that provide the system of controls overthe network of matter and energy consumed by the society.
Activities C (manufacturing): Human activities that guarantee efficiency in the setof everyday operations.
FI: Fixed Investment
SS: Service Sector
HH: Household
B&M: Building and MaintenanceE&M: Energy and Mining
FS: Food Security
ES: Environmental Security
WS: Time for Work Supply
ET: Energy throughput (volume of energy use)
Source: Adapted from Mayumi (2001), Figure 9.4.

79

In an article on the relationship between well-being and the SDGs (Mehlmann, 2016),
I also argue that there is an inextricable link between the SDGs and the growing global
movement to go beyond mere economic growth and to place the improvement of
human well-being at the center of national development plans. In other words, theinternal (often subjective) well-being of human beings and the external (often
objectively ascertainable) degree of development are closely linked. Furthermore, thesearch for the nexus is essential to bring about a global increase in the degree of humandevelopment and well-being. This study records some observations on the linkage
between subjective well-being and the SDGs as objective indicators and is yet to reacha detailed empirical analysis by combining subjective well-being and objective
indicators. However, further elaboration of the linkage between the concepts based on
this perspective and measurement of the degree of human development and well-being
based on data will be a useful research work that is consistent with both the work ofdevelopment economics, which is my major, and positive psychology.

References
Mayumi, Kozo (2001), “The Origins of Ecological Economics: The Bioeconomics ofGeorgescu-Roegen”, London: Routledge.
Mehlmann, Marilyn (2016), “Happiness and the SDGs”, (http://17goals.org/happinessand-the-sdgs/).
Sen, Amartya (2004), “Capability and well-being”, in Nussbaum, Martha; Sen,Amartya (eds.), The quality of life, New York: Routledge, pp. 30–53.

80