ArticlePublisher preview available

A Psychologically Rich Life: Beyond Happiness and Meaning

August 2021
Psychological Review 129(4)

DOI:10.1037/rev0000317

Authors:

Shigehiro Oishi

University of Virginia

Erin Westgate

University of Florida

Psychological science has typically conceptualized a good life in terms of either hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. We propose that psychological richness is another, neglected aspect of what people consider a good life. Unlike happy or meaningful lives, psychologically rich lives are best characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences. We present empirical evidence that happiness, meaning, and psychological richness are related but distinct and desirable aspects of a good life, with unique causes and correlates. In doing so, we show that a nontrivial number of people around the world report they would choose a psychologically rich life at the expense of a happy or meaningful life, and that approximately a third say that undoing their life's biggest regret would have made their lives psychologically richer. Furthermore, we propose that the predictors of a psychologically rich life are different from those of a happy life or a meaningful life, and report evidence suggesting that people leading psychologically rich lives tend to be more curious, think more holistically, and lean more politically liberal. Together, this work moves us beyond the dichotomy of hedonic versus eudaimonic well-being, and lays the foundation for the study of psychological richness as another dimension of a good life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

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A Psychologically Rich Life: Beyond Happiness and Meaning

Shigehiro Oishi

and Erin C. Westgate

Department of Psychology, University of Virginia

Department of Psychology, University of Florida

Psychological science has typically conceptualized a good life in terms of either hedonic or eudaimonic

well-being. We propose that psychological richness is another, neglected aspect of what people consider a

good life. Unlike happy or meaningful lives, psychologically rich lives are best characterized by a variety of

interesting and perspective-changing experiences. We present empirical evidence that happiness, meaning,

and psychological richness are related but distinct and desirable aspects of a good life, with unique causes

and correlates. In doing so, we show that a nontrivial number of people around the world report they would

choose a psychologically rich life at the expense of a happy or meaningful life, and that approximately a

third say that undoing their life’s biggest regret would have made their lives psychologically richer.

Furthermore, we propose that the predictors of a psychologically rich life are different from those of a happy

life or a meaningful life, and report evidence suggesting that people leading psychologically rich lives tend

to be more curious, think more holistically, and lean more politically liberal. Together, this work moves us

beyond the dichotomy of hedonic versus eudaimonic well-being, and lays the foundation for the study of

psychological richness as another dimension of a good life.

Keywords: happiness, meaning in life, psychological richness

Aristotle opens the Nicomachean Ethics by considering various

candidates for the good life: a life of pleasure, a life of honor, a life of

wealth or health or eminence. Or, as Aristotle himself argues

persuasively, a life led in accordance with virtue and excellence

(i.e., areté,Thomson, 1955). Of these, only two have survived the

test of time: the pleasurable life (despite Aristotle’s admonitions)

and the eudaimonic life (i.e., Aristotle’s preferred contender). In the

millennia since Greek philosophers debated the question, Aristotle’s

conception of “the good life”has proliferated into many ﬁne-tuned

theories of well-being (see Vittersø, 2016, for a comprehensive

review). However, the strong dichotomy between these two pre-

vailing models—hedonic versus eudaimonic well-being—continues

to dominate psychological research on the good life. Yet this

dichotomy limits psychology by overlooking many lives that do

not ﬁt neatly within it. In this article, we move beyond the

eudaimonic–hedonic divide to suggest a third contender for a

good life: a psychologically rich life—or a life characterized by a

variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences.

Together with happiness and meaning, we suggest that psychologi-

cal richness constitutes an element of a life well lived.

We deﬁne a good life as a life well lived from the perspective ofthe

person living it, as opposed to a purely objectivist perspective (i.e.,

whether most people would recognize it as such; see Sumner, 1996,

for a philosophically grounded discussion on subjective versus

objective theories of a good life). Psychologists have advanced

many broad theories of subjective well-being (see Diener, Oishi,

et al., 2018, for review), ranging from dispositional and genetic (Lykken

& Tellegen, 1996) to motivational and need-fulﬁllment accounts

(Emmons, 1986;Higgins, 2011;Ryan & Deci, 2001;Ryff, 1989).

These existing theories address many fundamental questions, from

how to explain stable individual differences in well-being, and the

temporal processes (e.g., adaptation) underlying them, to the types of

life events and conditions facilitating it (Luhmann et al., 2012;

Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). Many models focus on social cognition,

from the role of attention and appraisal in shaping well-being (Kurtz,

2008;O’Brien & Ellsworth, 2012) to the judgments people draw

about their own and others’happiness (Gilbert, 2006;Kahneman,

1999;Robinson & Clore, 2002). Other theories have focused speciﬁ-

cally on the beneﬁts of positive emotion (Fredrickson, 2001)and

increasing happiness (Dunn et al., 2014;Lyubomirsky, 2008;Van

Boven & Gilovich, 2003). However, none of these theories address

the central question of what it means to live a good life, or the type of

ideal life people imagine for themselves. In other words, because they

do not ask what kind of life people want to live, we do not know if

current concepts of happiness and meaning comprehensively cover

the possibilities.

To preview, we argue that a psychologically rich life is one such

life that people desire, which is unaccounted for by current con-

ceptualizations of well-being. A psychologically rich life, we will

show, is related to (but distinct from) a happy or a meaningful life,

with distinct causes and consequences (see Besser & Oishi, 2020,

for a philosophical overview). To be clear, we do not claim that

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

This article was published Online First August 12, 2021.

Erin C. Westgate https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9116-6246

We are grateful to Lorraine Besser, Hyewon Choi, Nick Buttrick,

Samantha Heintzelman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jane Tucker, Charlie Ebersole,

Youngjae Cha, Dan Haybron, Josh Perlin, Tim Wilson, Jerry Clore, and Dan

McAdams for their help and/or comments on this project. This research was

supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and Saint Louis

University (G011993). An earlier version of this paper was pre sented at Saint

Louis University’s capstone conference on well-being and ﬂourishing in

May 2018 (www.happinessnadwell-being.org/capstone), as well as at the

SPSP Happiness preconference in February 2021.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shigehiro

Oishi, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville,

VA 22904-4400, United States. Email: soishi@Virginia.EDU

Psychological Review

ISSN: 0033-295X https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000317

790

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Jun 2013

Daniel M. Haybron

Happiness: A Very Short Introduction considers the true nature of happiness and the current thinking on the subject, from psychology to philosophy. What is happiness? Is it subjective or can we put an objective value on it? How can and should we pursue happiness? Happiness is an everyday term in our lives, and most of us strive to be happy, but defining happiness can be difficult. There are many diverse routes to happiness. How much of our view on what constitutes happiness is influenced by secular Western ideas on the contemporary pursuit of a good life?

An Unnecessary Woman

Article

Jan 2014

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Book

Oct 2013

James Joyce

A Psychologically Rich Life: Beyond Happiness and Meaning

Abstract

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