Neural correlates of the ‘good life’: eudaimonic well-being is associated with insular cortex volume

What does it mean to be well? Prior research suggests that it’s more than just the absence of illness or disease; a complete picture of psychological health is also defined in terms of the “good life,” or well-being. Amid continued debate as to what constitutes the good life, one point of relative agreement is that a person’s psychological health is contingent on their own subjective evaluation. The goal of the current study was to further our understanding of psychological functioning by investigating the neural correlates of self-evaluated psychological health and well-being. A sample of 113 incoming college freshmen completed an fMRI task in which they evaluated words and phrases related to three constructs associated with psychological health–well-being, ill-being, and social connectedness–in terms of self-descriptiveness and perceived malleability. Behaviorally, well-being and social connectedness items were more likely to be endorsed as self-descriptive than ill-being items, and social items were perceived to be more malleable. Neurally, self-evaluation was associated with increased activity in the default mode network, consistent with preregistered hypotheses. We observed strong spatial overlap in neural representations among constructs, though patterns of activity in a priori regions of interest–pgACC, vmPFC, and VS–exhibited low similarity among constructs. Furthermore, we found that these neural predictors explained additional variance in trial-level evaluations of psychological health, but not in individual differences in psychological health when aggregating across trials. Specifically, multilevel logistic regression revealed that greater vmPFC activity increased the likelihood of endorsing items as self-descriptive, but only for ill-being items. Exploratory specification curve analyses suggested that closer examination of these neural correlates using multivariate approaches may provide additional insight into individual differences in psychological health.

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The Good Life in the Face of Climate Change: Understanding Complexities of a Well-being Framework through the Experience of Pastoral Women

The Journal of Development Studies ◽

10.1080/00220388.2021.1881493 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Sarah E. Walker ◽

Brett L. Bruyere ◽

Apin Yasin ◽

Elizabeth Lenaiyasa ◽

Anna Lolemu

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

The Good Life ◽

The Face

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An Analysis of Prudential Value

Utilitas ◽

10.1017/s0953820812000581 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 334-354 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

STEPHEN M. CAMPBELL

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

The Good Life ◽

Prudential Value ◽

Good For ◽

The Relationship

This essay introduces and defends a new analysis of prudential value. According to this analysis, what it is for something to be good for you is for that thing to contribute to the appeal or desirability of being in your position. I argue that this proposal fits well with our ways of talking about prudential value and well-being; enables promising analyses of luck, selfishness, self-sacrifice and paternalism; preserves the relationship between prudential value and the attitudes of concern, love, pity and envy; and satisfies various other desiderata. I also highlight two ways in which the analysis is informative and can lead to progress in our substantive theorizing about the good life.

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A Critique of Raz’s Liberal Perfectionism: Morality and Politics

Government and Opposition ◽

10.1111/j.1477-7053.1996.tb01195.x ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 347-364

Author(s):

Bi‐Hwan Kim

Keyword(s):

Political Institutions ◽

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

The Good Life ◽

Objective Knowledge ◽

Self Identity ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

Joseph Raz ◽

The Individual ◽

Liberal Perfectionism

Joseph Raz Has Long Been Well Known as a Legal philosopher and theorist of practical reason. But it is only in the last decade that he has come to be widely identified as the most prominent defender of a distinctive interpretation of the liberal tradition. Raz wholeheartedly endorses the communitarian view that the individual is a social being, who needs society to establish his/her self-identity and to gain objective knowledge of the good, rather than a self-contained subject abstracted from any specific social experience. Unlike neutralist liberals, such as Rawls and Dworkin, he rejects ‘the priority of right over the good’, stressing the interdependent relationship between right and the good. Yet he remains very much a liberal in his commitment to the value of autonomy (or freedom) and argues powerfully for the desirability (or necessity) of incommensurable plural conceptions of the good life for the well-being of people, as well as for the liberal virtue of toleration, and for their attendant liberal democratic political institutions.

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Toward the Pursuit of What People Value

International Perspectives in Psychology Research Practice Consultation ◽

10.1027/2157-3891/a000007 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 59-73

Author(s):

Mendiola Teng-Calleja ◽

Jose Antonio R. Clemente ◽

Ma. Ligaya Menguito ◽

Donald Jay Bertulfo

Keyword(s):

Low Income ◽

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

The Philippines ◽

Living Wage ◽

The Good Life ◽

Initial Attempt ◽

The Difference ◽

Research And Policy ◽

The Capability Approach

Abstract. This study sought to initiate conversations on the utility of the capability approach and a psychological lens in approximating a living wage. We put forth the concept of capability gap – defined as the difference between what one values and what one perceives as attainable. We used a set of valued domains of a good life that were identified based on well-being indicators in determining capability gaps. Five hundred workers (all breadwinners) belonging to households selected through stratified random sampling from purposively chosen middle- and low-income communities in the Philippines participated in the survey. From the data, we constructed a weighted capability measure that determines the capability gap, weighted by the perceived importance of each of the good life domains. We likewise derived an estimate of a living wage that yields a weighted capability that represents individuals' capabilities to achieve and pursue valued outcomes, freedoms, and entitlements. This initial attempt at estimating a living wage based on individuals' capability to achieve and pursue a good life is presented as the main contribution of the research. The limitations of the study as well as its implications to living wage research and policy are discussed.

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Living the Good Life?

Waste ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501725845.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 193-208

Author(s):

Eiko Maruko Siniawer

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

Economic Power ◽

The Good Life ◽

Self Reflection ◽

Financial Wealth ◽

The Past ◽

Affluent Society

With the ever increasing sense in the 1980s that Japan had arrived as an economic power, attention was newly focused on what beyond financial wealth and material abundance constituted an affluent life, on what constituted “true affluence” or an “affluence of the heart.” Affluence—and waste along with it—came to be conceived in more psychological, spiritual, and emotional terms than in the past, with an attention to a well-being and self-fulfillment which extended beyond the purely financial. What was often being sought was yutori, or leisure, relaxation, space, and unconstricted time. Financial and material prosperity made possible self-reflection about what a good life could and should be in an affluent society.

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“The secret to happiness may be unhappiness”

Propelled ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190912963.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Andreas Elpidorou

Keyword(s):

Social Psychology ◽

Positive Emotions ◽

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

The Good Life ◽

Philosophical Literature ◽

Negative Experiences ◽

Emotional Adaptation ◽

Positive Experiences ◽

Conception Of The Good

The chapter explores the nature of the good life, articulates the role that happiness, pleasure, and positive emotions play in such a life, and considers the effects of emotional adaptation and emotional diversity on our well-being. By drawing upon both philosophical literature and research in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, it argues for a broad conception of the good life, one that does not identify the good life simply with the presence of positive experiences and the absence of negative ones. The chapter shows not only that negative experiences aren’t detrimental to our well-being, but that they are often necessary to achieve it.

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Ecocritique and Anecdote

Anecdotal Evidence ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190065713.003.0012 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 11-48

Author(s):

Sean Cubitt

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

Well Being ◽

The Good Life ◽

The Past ◽

Living Well ◽

The World ◽

Central Notion

Section 1 starts by considering the central notion of this book: a “ecocritique”. The ecocritique recognises that the good life for all includes the well-being of the world we are involved in at every level from the cellular to the cosmic. It is all encompassing. Section 1 then considers how the term “anecdote” relates to ecocritique. Anecdotes provide a peculiarly powerful tool for finding out the meaning of living well, as well as the answering the oft-asked question: who is this “we”? The beauty of anecdotes is that they operate in a non-contemporaneous time. They operate equally well in the past, present, and future. A primary political and ecocritical task of anecdotal method, therefore, is to recognise this hybrid temporality, and to free and maintain its capacity to generate new futures and new pasts.

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