The scientific rationale for the holiday season

The holiday season is a time when many of us try to be our best selves, focusing on things that bring real value to our lives like social connections, gratitude, forgiveness and generosity. 

But as we prepare to enter a presidential election year, we face extraordinary uncertainty and polarization, as well economic pressures, military conflicts and an increasing number of climate challenges.    

The good news is that researchers are making significant progress in understanding how we as individuals can respond to uncertainty and flourish in the modern world. While we may not be able to bring order to chaos and uncertainty, there are specific, human-centric tools and policy approaches, including fostering connections, promoting forgiveness and expressing gratitude, that can help people and communities thrive even during times of adversity. This is made clear by the burgeoning scientific field of human flourishing.

First, the importance of fostering connections. Insights on the relationships among health, subjective well-being and loneliness, the latter of which the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a public health concern on par with smoking, obesity and physical inactivity, are increasingly relevant to policymakers. The recent Global State of Connections Survey from Gallup shows that loneliness is a global issue, with nearly one in four people feeling very or fairly lonely. 

Policymakers are beginning to recognize that this is a problem in need of a solution, with the WHO launching a new commission co-chaired by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and aimed at fostering social connections, and New York recently appointing the legendary Dr. Ruth as its loneliness ambassador. While there is more to be done to understand and address this issue, it is clear that nurturing personal relationships and ties with our communities can help lead to better health and happiness. Small things like putting away your cell phone when engaging in conversation with people has been shown to deepen connection and enhance the quality of engagement. Taking the time to nurture a close relationship, filled with meaningful interactions, can have a real effect, especially amid the holiday season, which can increase isolation for some. 

Next, forgiveness. The holiday cliché of families unable to sit down together obscures a dark truth: holding grudges is bad for one’s health. In contrast, practicing forgiveness is a powerful tool. It can lead to reduced stress and lower blood pressure and support better mental and overall well-being, findings confirmed earlier this year by the largest-ever study of forgiveness. And, perhaps most promisingly, forgiveness is a skill that can be taught, with the same study showing that a two-hour, self-guided workbook can teach people across cultures to become more capable and more willing to forgive. The holidays are as appropriate a time as any to begin learning this skill. 

Finally, gratitude. Gratitude is the natural response to benevolence, whether that benefactor is a stranger, a loved one or the planet, and helps encourage a true sense of appreciation that can yield benefits for an entire community. Recent experiments show that when people express gratitude, they are less likely to take resources for themselves, and instead share what resources are available with others. This finding validates what many indigenous cultures and religions have known for millennia: gratitude is part and parcel of being a responsible member of a larger community, which gets at the very heart of what the holidays are about. 

These concepts are just scratching the surface of what science can tell us about actions and policies that can help people thrive. The Global Flourishing Study, a collaboration between scholars at Harvard and Baylor Universities, Gallup, the Center for Open Science and a consortium of funders is following 240,000 individuals from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries over five years. Each year, scientists are tracking a broad range of well-being outcomes as part of a focused effort to understand what it means to flourish and thrive in different parts of the world, which will be critical for informing fit-for-purpose policies that promote flourishing. 

Another encouraging development is the Global Flourishing Conference, which is hosted by the Templeton World Charity Foundation and brings together interdisciplinary experts from across the world, cultures and contexts. Gatherings like this can help transform human flourishing science into practical tools that help policymakers implement programs to optimize new technologies like artificial intelligence for virtue rather than efficiency, tackle entrenched challenges like polarization and promote happier, more connected and flourishing societies. 

There is clearly more to be done. But there are real things that each of us can do, starting this holiday season, to make the world a little bit of a better place. Reaching out to people, forgiving and expressing gratitude are not just words to live by, but scientifically proven measures to improve health and happiness for ourselves and our communities, and ultimately to flourish. 

Robert A. Emmons is Professor Emeritus at University of California, Davis, and chair of the 2023 Global Flourishing Conference Program Advisory Committee