Living the well-lived life is a prized and sometimes elusive-appearing goal. While much of the world’s population still struggles to meet basic needs, widespread inequity making the meaning-and-purposed-based eudaimonic existence problematic, nevertheless understanding what contributes to greater personal satisfaction is a critically important subject.

Ultimately, as more people with access to resources embrace compassion and themselves flourish, there is reason to believe that greater focus on common humanity and the imperative to reduce overall suffering may help a greater and greater number of people.

Common humanity and widespread suffering become harder to deny, as social media and information technology confront us daily with reports of rising rates of mental illness and burnout, escalating global woes1, and increasing calls for the tools and resources to make effective change possible, by the most rarefied echelons of leadership to the grassiest roots of community.

While there is ample research on compassion, flourishing, and character as separate aspects, research on their interrelationships is less developed. With this in mind, Paul Verhaeghen, in a recent paper in the Journal of Happiness Studies (2024), engaged more than 11,000 people in survey-based research, in which participants reported on factors known to be most critical.

The primary research questions asked had to do with the relationship between virtues, flourishing, and compassion-related factors, and, specifically, how they related to the virtue caring. What follow are the core factors looked at.

Caring. Fairness, forgiveness, kindness, gratitude, love, and spirituality.

Inquisitiveness. Appreciation of beauty and excellence, curiosity, creativity, love of learning, and perspective.

Self-Control. Honesty, judgment, perseverance, prudence, and self-regulation.

The three virtues were distilled out of a prior set of 24 character traits, from positive psychology work: creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality.

Flourishing refers to deeper forms of meaning and life satisfaction, rather than just pleasure-seeking. Flourishing is measured with the eight-item Flourishing Scale2.

Flourishing. Purpose and meaning in life, life satisfaction, optimism, competence, engagement in activities, relationships, contributing to others’ happiness, and being respected by others.

There are many tools for measuring compassion for oneself and others, covering many different dimensions. In this study, the author focused on the most statistically-significant components of general and........

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