Focus on Community
Here we focus on the relevance of community to individual wellbeing, a major focus of our original GENIAL model \cite{Kemp_2017}. The Japanese have a word to describe "lonely death" - ‘kodokushi’ - which refers to people dying without friends or family, and sometimes these individuals are not found for many weeks... or months. ("Dead people don't pay their bills"). Tragically, these experiences characterise the modern world, and especially individualistic cultures. Social ties are deteriorating and loneliness is on the rise \cite{Kushlev_2017,Twenge_2013,twenge2014,putnam2001}, the reasons for which are complicated, but may involve a host of interconnected societal issues including generational shifts in narcissism \cite{Twenge_2013,twenge2014}, increasing individualism (versus collectivism) in western society \cite{Heu_2018,Brewer_2007}, and inequality \cite{Scheffer_2017,scheidel2017,r2010}. Critically, loneliness has important impacts on health and wellbeing. For instance, a meta-analysis of studies on more than 300,000 participants reported that a lack of social ties are associated with a 50% increased risk of premature mortality over a 7.5 year follow-up period, an effect that was stronger than physical activity, smoking (15 cigarettes daily) and body mass index \cite{Holt_Lunstad_2010}. In a more recent study on 48,673 participants, the same researchers \citep*{Holt-Lunstad2015} observed that social isolation (29%), loneliness (26%), and living alone (32%) increase risk for premature mortality, reporting no differences for objective and subjective measures. Furthermore, greater impacts on mortality were observed among those under the age of 65 years.
Social isolation and loneliness may lead to ill-being via a host of behavioural, psychological and physiological factors. Associated behavioural factors include physical inactivity and smoking \cite{Shankar_2011}, substance use and hazardous drinking \citep*{Stickley2014}, while psychological factors include decreases in self-esteem, increased risk of depression, and feelings of hopelessness \citep*{Steptoe_2004}, contributing to a dysregulation of cardiovascular, metabolic, and neuroendocrine processes \citep*{Grant2009}, higher systolic blood pressure, independent of several factors such as age, gender, cardiovascular risk factors, medications, social support and perceived stress \citep*{Hawkley_2010}. The NIACT \cite{Kemp_2017a} and GENIAL \cite{Kemp_2017} models integrate these behavioural, psychological and physiological factors into an innovative framework within which pathways to health and ill-health may be understood, bridging the gap between psychological moments and mortality.
Further to our original GENIAL model \cite{Kemp_2017}, the relationship between social ties and health was recently comprehensively reviewed in a book titled 'The New Psychology of Health: Unlocking the Social Cure' \cite{2018}. Social identity theory helped to contextualise the research that was discussed, emphasising that people conform to the norms of the group to which they identify. Therefore, the actions and thoughts of the group become the reference point for the individual. If an individual's perception of others in a representative group is positive, individuals of that group will think and behave similarly. Peer modelling has proven to be an effective intervention to increase fruit and vegetable intake \cite{Horne_2008}, although only when modelled by someone that shares the same group identity \cite{Cruwys_2012}. By contrast, if an individual was to identify with a group whose health behaviours are risky, they are more likely to participate in negative health behaviours. Research has shown there is a relationship between strength of group identification and smoking status when smoking is a normal group behaviour \cite{Schofffild_2001}. Intriguingly however, the more group identities an individual has, the less likely they are to engage in negative health behaviours, such as cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and use of illicit drugs \cite{Miller_2016}.
Social identify theory provides a useful context within which to understand the individual. Social identity provides meaning, purpose and worth to an individuals life: the meaning hypothesis. Social identity facilitates the extent to which others are likely to provide social support (the support hypothesis). Social identity also provides a sense of efficacy, agency and power to an individual (the agency hypothesis), contributing to the sense that 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'. Strikingly, research has demonstrated that cardiac and respiratory patterns synchronise when members of a choir sing in unison, compared to when singing independently \citep*{Timmons2015}. This phenomenon of 'physiological linkage' may help to explain reduced relationship satisfaction \citep{Timmons2015} as synchrony of the sympathetic nervous system or HPA axis may underpin negative affective experience. Conversely, it may also help to explain XXX positive effects?? XXX
To conclude, community is important for individual health and wellbeing as it provides the environment in which individual health and wellbeing may be achieved. A supportive community will therefore contribute to the health and wellbeing of individuals within that community, and this relationship will be a bidirectional one such that improved health and wellbeing of individuals will also foster community wellbeing. For instance, scholars have emphasised for example, that community resilience is underpinned by the individuals within it, highlighting the role of a positive outlook and individual strengths, which underpin a community's capacity for resilience and agency \cite{Berkes_2013}. Community resilience is a social-ecological system, nested within different levels of a complex system - the 'symbioment' (see fig \ref{881013}) - which is (perhaps over-) simplified in the present paper to levels that include the individual, community and the environment. We now turn our attention to the wider environment in which individuals live and work, focusing on a major societal challenge to human health and wellbeing: anthropogenic climate change.
Focus on the Environment
Here we focus on contributions from the wider environment to individual wellbeing, and consider how different approaches to enhancing wellbeing may have beneficial or adverse impacts on the environment.
Psychological science has been criticised for a blinkered focus on the
individual, while ignoring wider, systemic issues issues \cite{Carlisle_2009,Frawley_2015}. The ‘happiness
industry’ has been described as egocentric, neoliberal
socialism in which “sharing is preferable to selling as long as it
doesn’t interfere with the financial interests of dominant
corporations” \cite{davies2015}. Similar criticism has been made of the construct of wellbeing, which has
been argued to be a socio-cultural construction of western individualism
that places importance on wealth, fame and materialistic pursuits, while
neglecting and disregarding our shared environment environment \cite{Carlisle_2009}. These criticisms in
combination with the ever-increasing body of peer-reviewed literature on
‘happiness’ and ‘wellbeing’ were, in part, reason for proposing the
original GENIAL framework \cite{Kemp_2017}, which extended theoretical frameworks of
individual wellbeing to community wellbeing, and motivated us to
consider how this framework might relate to one of the greatest
challenges faced by mankind today: anthropogenic climate change. We use the term
‘environment’ in a very general sense, encompassing natural as well as human-built environments, although we place emphasis on the relationship between individual wellbeing and environmental sustainability given the sheer scale of the challenge associated with anthropogenic climate change, unless otherwise indicated.
Human beings have a strong, innate affiliation with the biological
world, a phenomenon captured by the ‘biophilia hypothesis’ and exposure
to nature can lead to transcendent emotions including peak experience \cite{1964} and
psychological flow \cite{Csikszentmihalyi_2014}. These experiences have been described as
the sublime emotion towards nature, encompassing the experience of awe
and inspiring energy, that may even promote environmentalist commitment \cite{Bethelmy_2019}. Awe
is a positive, transcendent emotion characterised by widened eyes and a
dropped jaw in combination with physical sensations such as ‘goosebumps’
and the ‘chills’ \cite{Keltner_2003,Yaden_2018}. In a study of reported emotional experience based on
2,185 emotionally evocative videos \cite{Cowen_2017}, awe was observed to be one of 27
distinct varieties of emotions. The authors further observed that
specific emotional experiences formed smooth transitions between
distinct varieties of distinct experiences. So for instance, a smooth
gradient was observed between calmness, aesthetic appreciation of beauty
and awe leading the authors to suggest that the boundaries between
different emotions are fuzzy. Other research has reported that exposure
to nature is associated with a reduction in stress \cite{Hansmann_2007}\cite{Ulrich_1991}, feelings of restoration \cite{White_2013,Wyles_2017}, subjective wellbeing \cite{Johansson_2011,LUCK_2011,White_2017}, improved cognitive functioning \cite{Berman_2008,Berto_2005} and stronger connections with others \cite{Mayer_2008,Richardson_2016}.
The ‘biophilia hypothesis’ has been broadened to encompass
non-living, physical elements, emphasising human affiliation with the
local environment (‘place’) and a role for cultural experience \cite{Beery_2015,s2012}. This
‘topophilia hypothesis’ posits that human beings have a “genetically
based drive for exploring the local environment… [that improves] the chances of
the individual to survive and reproduce” \cite{Beery_2015}. The word topophilia combines topos (place) with philia (love) - first used by the poet W.H. Auden in 1947 - is increasingly being replaced by 'tierratrauma' (acute trauma associated with rapid and devastating change to a loved place) and 'solastalgia' (chronic place-based distress) \cite{albrecht2019}. It is accepted in
scientific circles \cite{change2007,change2014} that humanity will face catastrophic
climate change should we fail to commit to climate action. An increase in the frequency, duration and intensity of extreme weather events increases risk of population distress and psychiatric disorders through disruption to food supply and damage to community wellbeing \cite{Berry_2009,Hayes_2018}. The biophilia and topophilia hypotheses provide a foundation on which to understand the distress, pain or sickness that has been reported with environmental change of home or territory. This is the phenomenon of ‘solastalgia’ \cite{ALBRECHT,2019,Albrecht_2007}. Extreme weather events have even been shown to influence the future health and wellbeing of an unborn child with implications for brain development and metabolic outcomes \cite{Dancause_2013,Dancause_2015}.
Glenn Albrecht,
an Australian environmental philosopher coined the term ‘solastalgia’ following reflection on the environmental impacts of open cut coal mining
and pollution of local power stations on the residents of the Upper
Hunter Region of NSW in Australia. He writes that ‘solastalgia’ reflects
a “specific form of melancholia connected to a lack of solace and
intense desolation” associated with place-based distress \cite{albrecht2005a}. Mental
distress and psychiatric disorders are expected to arise from the direct
effects of climate-related disasters as well as the indirect effects of
such events (e.g. disruption to food supply and damage to community
wellbeing) \cite{Berry_2009,Hayes_2018}. In fact, the number of people experiencing psychological
trauma exceeds those with physical injury by 40–1 \cite{j2007}, and weather related disasters have increased by
44% since the year 2000 \cite{Watts_2018}. Critically, there is now strong evidence to
conclude that we humans are contributing to such change, a phenomenon
known as anthropogeneic climate change. Research reporting on ratings of
peer-reviewed climate-science and self-ratings by climate change
scientists themselves has indicated that there is 97% endorsement of
humans contribution to the warming climate \cite{Cook_2013}. Unfortunately, this finding
remains under appreciated in a brave new world of alternative facts and
disinformation \cite{Lewandowsky_2013,Lewandowsky_2017}.
In our original GENIAL model \cite{Kemp_2017}, we described an important role for
positive social ties and community on health and wellbeing.
Interestingly, others \cite{Beery_2015,Nurse_2010} have argued that the boundaries of ‘community’
should be extended to the environment including soil, water, plants and
animals, in order to facilitate love and respect, and a commitment to
environmental sustainability. Feelings of guilt, shame,
fear, emotional discomfort and solastalgia have been associated with
motivation to engage in environmental sustainability behaviours \cite{Albrecht_2007,DICKERSON_1992,Kaiser_2008,Malott_2010}. Others
have proposed an ‘aesthetics of elsewhere’, which involves encouraging a
double aesthetic judgment of ‘here’ and ‘elsewhere’ to induce an
aesthetic melancholia to influence consumption decisions \cite{maskit2011}. By contrast, others have argued
for a positive psychology of sustainability \cite{Corral_Verdugo_2014,Corral_Verdugo_2012,obrien2016}, a strategy that may
help to foster what has been described as sustainable wellbeing \cite{Kjell_2011}. In a
study on 606 undergraduate students in Mexico \cite{fraijo-sing2011}, researchers reported
that pro-ecological, altruistic, frugal and equitable behaviors reflect
the behaviours of a sustainably-oriented person, and that these
sustainable behaviours have positive psychological consequences. Prior
research had shown that individuals engaging in pro-ecological
behaviours – such as resource conservation – report greater happiness
\cite{Brown_2005}, that altruism leads to greater long-term happiness \cite{ja1995}, and that frugality predicts greater psychological
wellbeing, satisfaction and motivation \cite{Brown_2005}. More equitable individuals
however, had been reported to be less happy due to the ‘negative hedonic
impact of inequality in society’. It is notable here that climate change
exacerbates existing inequities \cite{Hayes_2018}.
Others have proposed the concept of ‘sustainable happiness’ \cite{2016}, defined as “happiness that
contributes to individual, community, and/or global well-being without
exploiting other people, the environment, or future generations”\cite{obrien2010} thus
differentiating it from “sustaining happiness” or “sustainable increases in happiness” \cite{s2007}. More
recently, a structural model of the relationships between character
strengths, virtues and sustainable behaviours has been presented in
which all 24 character strengths \cite{p2004} are associated with all four
sustainable behaviours (i.e. altruistic, frugal, equitable and
pro-ecological behaviours) \cite{Corral_Verdugo_2015}. This body of work provides a useful
foundation on which psychological scientists may advocate a role for the
discipline in addressing environmental challenges, such that
pro-environmental behaviours also provide opportunities to promote
happiness and build resources for resilience, in addition to much-needed
environmental benefits \cite{Clayton_2016,fraijo-sing2011,Corral_Verdugo_2012}. The grave threat that human beings face may also inspire a variety of positive feelings such as altruism,
compassion, optimism as well as a sense of purpose “as people band
together to salvage, rebuild, and console amongst the chaos and loss of
a changing climate” \cite{Hayes_2018}, reflecting ‘active hope’ \cite{c2012}.
While the emerging positive psychology of sustainability \cite{Corral_Verdugo_2015,Kjell_2011,Corral_Verdugo_2012,obrien2016} provides a clear link
between individual and environmental wellbeing, it is also notable that
the vast majority of people do not engage in proenvironmental behaviours
[REF?]. Recent qualitative research \cite{langen2017} has investigated the
psychological processes that not only foster such behaviours, but those
that can lead one to become agents for change. The researchers
interpreted their findings in the context of ‘salutogenesis’ \cite{ANTONOVSKY_1996}The salutogenic concept
emphasises a key role for a ‘sense of coherence’ for managing and
overcoming stress. This ‘sense of coherence’ reflect feelings of
confidence that stimuli in the (internal and external) environment are
comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. The researchers reported that
grassroots activists relied on values and attitudes, rather than
cognitive assessments of the problems. The researchers emphasised that
the problems are so vast that limits are imposed on knowledge (i.e.
comprehensibility), arguing that emotions are a key mediator between the
appraisal of a situation and motivation to take action. The difficulty
in comprehending problems associated with climate change, and the
intangibility and invisibility of such change may even lead individuals
to sit on their hands and do nothing, a phenomenon known as ‘Giddens
Paradox’ \cite{a2009}. Maschkowski and colleagues also contrast the
ideological foundation of consumer society (‘the more we consume, the
better off we are’) with a sense of personal responsibility for change,
reporting that grassroots activists had an improved perceived quality of
life, speculating that these improvements were attributable to
empowerment and social cohesion, providing a sense of meaning and
purpose in life (i.e. meaningfulness). Finally, concrete and collective
action was observed to enhance positive emotions and mastery experiences
subsequently enhancing beliefs about self-efficacy (i.e. manageability)
\cite{langen2017}.
In summary, exposure to nature provides a host of benefits that have
direct impacts on wellbeing - even when controlling for the benefits of physical activity [XXX INFLUENTIAL REF?? XXX] - and may even promote commitment to
proenvironmental behaviours. Although psychological scientists have been
criticised for contributing to the problem of consumerism and
materialistic pursuits, we have observed emerging research interest in
the concepts of sustainable happiness and wellbeing, directly linking
positive psychology to concepts relating to sustainability and
proenvironmental behaviours. While some authors have questioned whether
it is possible to quantify wellbeing \cite{Crawshaw_2008}, arguing that wellbeing is a
holistic concept that is difficult to pin down within a “culture of
growing self-interest propagated within pervasive neoliberal ideology”
\cite{Dooris_2017}, we suggest otherwise, although much work in this area remains to be
done. Researchers have begun to begun to propose broader
conceptualisations of health and wellbeing incorporating individual,
family, community and societal dimensions \cite{Dooris_2017}, as well as the need to
support the wellbeing of future generations \cite{Lindstr_m_2010}. While psychological
scientists have typically emphasised a role for the individual in
enhancing and improving wellbeing (i.e. the individualist approach to
health), sociologists have emphasised the role of the state (the
structuralist approach to health). Future research on wellbeing will
require us to step outside our disciplinary silos, and conduct
inter-disciplinary, even trans-disciplinary research that harnesses both
approaches. Behaviour change is difficult especially in regards to the
adoption of proenvironmental behaviours. It is a perhaps relief that one
can be motivated to act against climate change, irrespective of personal
importance placed on climate change itself and whether or not one is a
‘believer’ or ‘skeptic’ by appealing to economic advancement and
building community \cite{Bain_2015}.
INTEGRATE:
http://www.thrivingplacesindex.org/, “This year, we have
strengthened the sustainability and equality domains to underline the
vital importance of delivering the conditions for wellbeing in a way
that challenges current power imbalances and recognises the rights of
future generations.“
XXX
Exposure to nature is another route through which an individual can
experience eudaimonia (Passmore & Howell, 2014), among others (Ruini &
Ryff, 2016).