“An open letter to an art agent or manager / Wide Eyed” by flickr user Surian Soosay

Title: Artful Living: Examining the Relationship between Artistic Practice and Subjective Wellbeing Across Three National Surveys

Author(s): Steven J. Tepper, with contributions from Blake Sisk, Ryan Johnson, Leah Vanderwerp, Genevieve Gale, and Min Gao.

Publisher: The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University

Year: 2014

URL: https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Research-Art-Works-Vanderbilt.pdf

Topics: arts and wellbeing, life satisfaction

Methods: Regression analysis of data from three national surveys: the DDB Needham Life Style Survey, which measures consumer attitudes; the Double Major Student Survey, among 1,700 college seniors at four comprehensive institutions and five liberal arts colleges; and the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), among 4,031 graduates from 76 art colleges.

What it says: “Artful Living” explores the hypothesis that the arts are essential to a high quality of life. Examining data from three national surveys, the authors find strong evidence that artistic and creative practice is associated with wellbeing, including “higher levels of life satisfaction, a more positive self image, less anxiety about change, a more tolerant and open approach to diverse others, and, in some cases, less focus on materialistic values and the acquisition of goods.” The effect of artistic practice on life satisfaction is statistically significant but small, explaining only a little of the variance between people. Nevertheless, its correlation to wellbeing is comparable to that of being married, having children, or country of residence. The authors found that the relationship between artistic practice and wellbeing depends on the frequency and intensity of participation, the type of creative practice, and participants’ demographics. For instance, effects are strengthened with intensity and frequency of artistic practice, and with nonwhite adults and women. Among the general population sample, playing music had the strongest effect (compared to crafts and gardening). This again holds true for former arts students (compared to dance and visual arts), for whom the effect of artistic practice, generally, is mediated by their expectations for how much time they need to work on their art and whether those expectations are being met. Differential effects by discipline (across all surveys): visual arts and crafts have a consistent association, music in some cases, and theater not at all. The research does not demonstrate causation, although the literature review cites some qualitative studies that provide support for a causal theory, and the authors argue that the fact that the effect increases with frequency of engagement is suggestive of causation.

What I think about it: The regression analyses seem well designed on the whole. Survey-based approaches are always tricky, and of the three cited here, the DDB Needham survey analysis is the most compelling given its large, representative population sample. (The Double Major survey has a highly specialized audience and SNAAP responses may be confounded by expectations for creative practice, both of which limit external validity.) However, the DDB Needham survey does not capture many different artistic practices (only three in comparison to the ten included in the SNAAP survey). Warranting most caution are the effect sizes, which are typically 3-10% of a standard deviation in wellbeing scores. Clearly, it’s not like participation in the arts is some magical elixir that will solve all your problems. That said, when stacking conditions on top of each other, e.g. in the case of an African American female who engages frequently in gardening, the effect could be more impressive.

What it all means: The paper demonstrates fairly convincingly the existence of a relationship between artistic practice and various outcomes of interest, though the effect should not be overstated. However, in the absence of an experimental approach, there is little here to say that participation in the arts causes people to be happier, and some reason to think that might not be the case. For example, there is evidence that much of subjective wellbeing is genetically determined by temperament. There’s even less of a causal case to make when examining values like tolerance or anti-materialism, which may well lead someone into artistic practice rather than result from it. Overall, the data is consistent with the hypothesis that expectations and whether they are being fulfilled have more to do with subjective wellbeing than the specifics of what those expectations are. This evidence is supportive of the “Eye of the Beholder” principle in Createquity’s healthy arts ecosystem definition and our general embrace of the capability approach.

“Watching TV…” by Michael Riedel

Title: Watching Alone: Relational goods, television, and happiness

Author(s): Luigino Bruni & Luca Stanca

Publisher: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Year: 2008

URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268106002095

Topics: television, subjective wellbeing, relational goods

Methods: Regression analysis using data from the World Values Study

What it says: Despite what people might think about the relationship between income and happiness, individual happiness does not appear to grow with overall economic growth according to the data in the World Values Survey. Some researchers have explained this by theorizing that people make decisions about consumption by comparing themselves to a reference group, which makes individual utility measurable in terms relative to other people. According to this theory, as long as your means to consume remain unchanged relative to other people, your overall happiness will remain unchanged, even if your consumption level has increased. The means by which television reduces subjective wellbeing, according to Bruni and Stanca, is that watching advertising and content featuring wealthy people inspires dissatisfaction among viewers and constant aspiration for more and better things.

In addition to leading to income aspiration, Bruni and Stanca present theories from psychological research that suggest strong interpersonal relationships and time spent with friends and family are key to a strong sense of wellbeing. Since television occupies such a large share of time in the United States and around the world, they argue that time spent watching television crowds out time that could be spent on activities with friends and family, or consuming “relational goods.”

Using data from the World Values Survey, which includes data from about 80 countries, they control for region of the world, age, gender, income, health, freedom, education, employment status, marital status, personality traits, and beliefs. In addition to considering the impact on life satisfaction descriptively, the authors use 2SLS to check on a possible causal interpretation of the results, with variables for the importance of friends and family and importance of television as instruments for the relational indicators and TV consumption, respectively. Their results show a positive relationship between volunteering and social activities and happiness, and a negative relationship between television viewing and social and volunteering activities. Using these results, they argue that, as countries’ wealth increases, people tend to over-consume material goods and under consume relational goods that would increase their life satisfaction to keep on an equal level of consumption as their neighbors. Since respondents’ tendency to participate in volunteer activities and interact socially with friends and family decreases as hours of television watched per day increases, their theory follows that one of the means by which life satisfaction does not increase with income is that television causes people to stay on the “relational treadmill” of failing to increase happiness as income increases.

What I think about it: Two research notes, one published in 2011 by Mitesh Kataria and Tobias Regner, and the other by Lutz Schneider published in 2013, dispute the findings in this paper based on the empirical approach and the interpretation.

Kataria and Regner criticize Bruni and Stanca for their strong interpretation of their findings based on just two regression analyses. They argue that there is significant heterogeneity between countries even within the dummy variables that Bruni and Stanca create based on regions of the world. In their models using data from different countries, they find that television has an overall positive impact on wellbeing, meaning that people who watch television are more likely to report positive wellbeing than people who don’t watch television. Additionally, they do not find evidence that relational activities are more associated with happiness than watching television. They argue that, in models where the direction of the coefficient on television hours is negative, the impact is very small compared to factors like income and health, and that more research into personality traits like neuroticism may be an interesting determinant of wellbeing and television to explore in future research.

Schneider finds an error in the way that Bruni and Stanca classified countries in the WVS and presents new analyses with the corrected classification. Schneider finds a much weakened impact of television viewing with the correct country classification on Bruni and Stanca’s regions, and when considering the significant impact of television viewing with the corrected country classification, the effect is no longer significant. Schenider finds more validity in Bruni & Stanca’s theoretical argument that income aspiration leads to the “relational treadmill” of not reaching increased life satisfaction, and points to papers with more convincing evidence to support that theory.

Bearing in mind these critiques, it seems that there is merit to Bruni and Stanca’s theoretical framework, but some problems with their empirical analysis and interpretation. I think we should be hesitant to take any of the magnitudes or the significance of their effects to heart, but their basic theory that television leads to income aspiration, which in turn causes people to over consume material goods and under consume relational goods has enough grounding that we should continue to consider its validity.

What it all means: In contrast with the literature we’ve reviewed relating watching television to health outcomes, where there seems to be some agreement in the direction and significance of the effects related to watching television, relating television to happiness seems to be a bit murkier. The evidence from these three papers suggests that there may be a relationship between income aspiration, happiness, and television, but that there is disagreement on the best way to assess the magnitude or the causes of that relationship according to the World Values Survey. In particular, the country-specific impacts appear to be significant drivers of whether or not television affects individual wellbeing. The conflicting results from these authors affirms the complexity of the intuition underlying the study of subjective wellbeing.

Books! by Kirrus

Happy New Year, Createquity Insiders! We are starting the year off productively with plans to launch two feature articles later this month. We’re also in the process of choosing our next research investigations. Stay tuned. And now back to our regularly scheduled program…

Television Watching and Wellbeing

We are putting the pieces together on our feature article for TV and wellbeing and clarifying our takeaways from our review of the literature. Here is the full list of sources we’ve reviewed thus far for the forthcoming article:

Bowman, S. (2006). Television-viewing characteristics of adults: correlations to eating practices and overweight and health status. Preventing Chronic Disease, 3(2). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16539779

Bruni, L., & Stanca, L. (2008). Watching Alone: Relational goods, television, and happiness. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 65(3-4), 506–528. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268106002095

Cardwell, S. (2014). Television Amongst Friends: Medium, Art, Media. Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 9(3), 6–21. Retrieved from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/manup/cstv/2014/00000009/00000003/art00002

Dempsey, P., Howard, B., Lynch, B., Owen, N., & Dunstan, D. W. (2014). Associations of television viewing time with adults’ well-being and vitality. Preventative Medicine.

Dunstan, D., Barr, E., Healy, G., Shaw, J., Balkau, B., Magliano, D., … Owen, N. (2010). Television viewing time and mortality: the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab). Circulation, 121(3), 384–91. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20065160

Guetzkow, J. (2002). How the Arts Impact Communities: An Introduction to the Literature on Arts Impact Studies (Working Paper Series No. 20). Taking the Measure of Culture Conference: Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. Retrieved from https://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/workpap/WP20%20-%20Guetzkow.pdf

Gupta, V., Nwosa, N., Nadel, T., & Inamdar, S. (2001). Externalizing behaviors and television viewing in children of low-income minority parents. Clinical Pediatrics, 40(6), 337–41. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11824177

Harlow, B. (2015). Staying Relevant in a Changing Neighborhood: How Fleisher Art Memorial is Adapting to Shifting Community Demographics (Wallace Studies in Building Arts Audiences). New York, NY: Wallace Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/audience-development-for-the-arts/strategies-for-expanding-audiences/Documents/Staying-Relevant-in-a-Changing-Neighborhood-How-Fleisher-Art-Memorial-is-Adapting-to-Shifting-Community-Demographics.pdf

Harlow, B., & Cox Roman, C. (2015). Someone Who Speaks Their Language: How a Nontraditional Partner Brought New Audiences to Minnesota Opera (Wallace Studies in Building Arts Audiences). New York, NY: Wallace Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/audience-development-for-the-arts/strategies-for-expanding-audiences/Documents/Someone-Who-Speaks-Their-Language.pdf

Harlow, B., & Heywood, T. (2015a). Getting Past “It’s Not For People Like Us”: Pacific Northwest Ballet Builds a Following with Teens and Young Adults (Wallace Studies in Building Arts Audiences). Wallace Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/audience-development-for-the-arts/strategies-for-expanding-audiences/Documents/Getting-Past-Its-Not-For-People-Like-Us.pdf

Harlow, B., & Heywood, T. (2015b). Opening New Doors: Hands-on Participation Brings a New Audience to a Clay Studio (Wallace Studies in Building Arts Audiences). New York, NY: Wallace Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/audience-development-for-the-arts/strategies-for-expanding-audiences/Documents/Opening-New-Doors-Hands-On-Participation-Brings-a-New-Audience-to-The-Clay-Studio.pdf

Hendriks Vettehen, P., Konig, R. P., Westerik, H., & Beentjes, H. (2012). Explaining television choices: The influence of parents and partners. Poetics, 40(6), 565–585. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X12000605

Hoang, T. D., Reis, J., Zhu, N., Jacobs, D. R., Launer, L. J., Whitmer, R. A., … Yaffe, K. (2015). Effect of Early Adult Patterns of Physical Activity and Television Viewing on Midlife Cognitive Function. JAMA Psychiatry. Retrieved from http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2471270

Horvath, C. W. (n.d.). Measuring Television Addiction. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 48(3). Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15506878jobem4803_3?journalCode=hbem20#.Vji50KL88gg

Jacobs, J., & Peacock, S. (2014). Editorial: “The Liveliest Medium”: Television’s Aesthetic Relationships With Other Arts. Critical Studies in Television, 9(3), 1–5. Retrieved from https://www.icahdq.org/pubs/Calls/liveliestmedium.asp

Jakes, R., Day, N., Luben, R., Oakes, S., Welch, A., Bingham, S., & Wareham, N. (2003). Television viewing and low participation in vigorous recreation are independently associated with obesity and markers of cardiovascular disease risk: EPIC-Norfolk population-based study. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 57(9), 1089–96. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12947427

Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2006). Would You Be Happier if You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion. Science, 312(5782), 1908–1910. Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/content/312/5782/1908.short

Kataria, M., & Regner, T. (2011). A Note on the Relationship Between Television Viewing and Individual Happiness. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 40(1), 53–58. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535710000892

Lampard, A., Jurkowski, J., & Davison, K. (2012). Social-cognitive predictors of low-income parents’ restriction of screen time among preschool-aged children. Health Education & Behavior: The Official Publication Of The Society For Public Health Education, 40(5), 526–30. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23239766

Lee, B., & Lee, R. S. (1995). How and Why People Watch TV: Implications for the Future of Interactive Television: Implications for the Future of Interactive Television. Journal of Advertising Research, 35(6). Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/242362719_How_and_why_people_watch_TV_Implications_for_the_future_of_interactive_television

Livingstone, S. (1998). Making Sense of Television: The Psychology of Audience Interpretation (Second). Routledge. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=0iIbwhcu1r4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

McCoy, C. A., & Scarborough, R. C. (2014). Watching “bad” television: Ironic consumption, camp, and guilty pleasures. Poetics, 47, 41–59. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X14000576

Muennig, P., Rosen, Z., & Johnson, G. (2013). Do the Psychological Risks Associated with Television Viewing Increase Mortality? Evidence from the 2008 General Social Survey – National Death Index dataset. Annals of Epidemiology, 23(6), 355–360. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662979/

Robinson, J. P., & Martin, S. (2008). What do Happy People Do? Social Indicators Research, 89(3), 565–571. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11205-008-9296-6

Romer, D., Jamieson, K. H., & Aday, S. (2003). Television News and the Cultivation of Fear of Crime. Journal of Communications, 53(1), 88–104. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2003.tb03007.x/abstract

Rosenstein, C. (2005). Diversity and Participation in the Arts: Insights from the Bay Area. The Urban Institute. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/311252-Diversity-and-Participation-in-the-Arts.PDF

Schneider, L. (2013). A Note on Income Aspirations, Television, and Happiness. Kyklos, 66(2), 301–305. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/kykl.12022/abstract

Shuval, K., Gabriel, K. P., & Leonard, T. (2013). TV Viewing and BMI by Race/Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Status. PLOS. Retrieved from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063579

Simons, N. (2015). TV drama as a social experience: An empirical investigation of the social dimensions of watching TV drama in the age of non-linear television. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 40(2), 219–236. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/279280934_TV_drama_as_a_social_experience_An_empirical_investigation_of_the_social_dimensions_of_watching_TV_drama_in_the_age_of_non-linear_television

Stevens, L. K. (1996). Motivating opera attendance : comparative qualitative research in 10 North American cities, 1996. Washington, D.C.: ArtsMarket Consulting. Retrieved from http://www.worldcat.org/title/motivating-opera-attendance-comparative-qualitative-research-in-10-north-american-cities-1996/oclc/35633527

Sussman, S., & Moran, M. B. (2013). Hidden addiction: Television. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 2(3), 125–132. Retrieved from http://www.akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/JBA.2.2013.008

Thompson, D., Matson, P., & Ellen, J. (2013). Television viewing in low-income latino children: variation by ethnic subgroup and English proficiency. Childhood Obesity, 9(1), 22–8. Retrieved from http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/chi.2012.0113

Uslaner, E. M. (1998). Social Capital, Television, and the “Mean World”: Trust, Optimism, and Civic Participation. Political Psychology, 19(3), 441–467. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3792173

van der Goot, M., Beentjes, J. W. J., & van Selm, M. (2015). Older adults’ television viewing as part of selection and compensation strategies. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 40(1), 93–111. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/277930457_Older_adults_television_viewing_as_part_of_selection_and_compensation_strategies

Wheeler, K. S. (2015). The relationships Between Television Viewing, Behaviors, Attachment, Loneliness, Depression, and Psychological Well-Being (Undergraduate Honors Thesis). Georgia Southern University, Georgia. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/98/

World Health Organization. (2012). Social Determinants of Health and Well-Being Among Young People.

Xu, J., Forman, C., Kim, J. B., & Van Ittersum, K. (2014). News Media Channels: Complements or Substitutes? Evidence from Mobile Phone Usage. Journal of Marketing, 78(4), 97–112. Retrieved from http://journals.ama.org/doi/abs/10.1509/jm.13.0198

History of Change in the Arts Ecosystem

We are also in the writing stage of our feature article exploring the history of change in the Arts Ecosystem. Here are the additional sources we reviewed in January for the forthcoming article:

Bogaert, S., Boone, C., Negro, G., & Witteloostuijn, A. van. (2014). Organizational Form Emergence A Meta-Analysis of the Ecological Theory of Legitimation. Journal of Management. http://doi.org/10.1177/0149206314527129

Burns, J. S. (1975). The Awkward Embrace: The Creative Artist and the Institution in America (1st edition). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Hanks, N. (1965). The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects. Rockefeller Brothers’ Panel Report on the Future of Theatre, Dance, Music in America. Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund. Retrieved from http://images.library.wisc.edu/Arts/EFacs/ArtsSoc/ArtsSocv03i3/reference/arts.artssocv03i3.rockefeller.pdf

National Endowment for the Arts. (1998). The Performing Arts Spread Out: Geography of Performing Arts Organizations, 1992(Research Division Note No. 63). Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/63.pdf

National Endowment of the Arts. (1998). Count of Performing Arts Organizations Up by Over 30 %, 1987 – 1992 (Research Division Note No. 62). Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/62.pdf

Novick, R. (2011). Please, don’t Start a Theatre Company! Next Generation Arts Institutions and Alternate Career Paths. GIA Reader, 22(1). Retrieved from http://www.giarts.org/article/please-dont-start-theater-company

O’Quinn, J. (2015). Going National: How America’s Regional Theatre Movement Changed the Game. American Theatre. Retrieved from http://www.americantheatre.org/2015/06/16/going-national-how-americas-regional-theatre-movement-changed-the-game/

Ragsdale, D. (2011, May 16). L3C Cha-Cha-Cha. Retrieved from http://blog.americansforthearts.org/2011/05/16/l3c-cha-cha-cha

“Maslow’s Real Hierarchy” by Mike Kline

Note: Createquity’s original definition of a healthy arts ecosystem included references to self-actualization as one of the benefits of the arts. We weren’t sure about how self-actualization and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs were viewed in the research field, however, so we conducted a bit of due diligence to come to a stronger understanding. This work eventually led us to a large body of research on wellbeing, about which we published a feature article in August 2015.

These initial research reports were completed in 2014 by members of the Createquity editorial team. They are intended to give a sense of our (very) preliminary thoughts on the topic in question. We welcome discussion and debate. – IDM

A bit about our process

Rather than generating specific hypotheses regarding the relationship between self-actualization and the arts, we did a scan of existing literature on self-actualization, wellbeing, and identity to get a rough sense of possible answers to the following questions:

• How seriously do psychologists and social theorists take self-actualization today?
• If it does have currency today, does self-actualization have a generally accepted scientific meaning and if so, what is that meaning?
• What is the relationship between self-actualization and more “basic” needs? Is it possible to reach self-actualization without other needs having been met first?

After doing a preliminary “data dump” into Zotero, compiling articles and reports on Maslow’s theory of self-actualization and alternate theories, we paused to determine the best way to move forward. Falling down the rabbit hole of “Was Maslow right or not?” was tempting, but we decided to expand beyond self-actualization specifically while refocusing our energies in two broad areas: examining literature related to the arts and psychological wellbeing, and literature related to the arts and identity. We also each read a handful of articles that emerged during our initial scan and seemed to be particularly relevant.

Extent to which existing research addresses our research questions, and extent to which there seem to be areas of consensus and debate

We found a lot of literature on Maslow’s theory of self-actualization and its application to a range of disciplines (i.e. management theory, mental health). As noted above, whether or not Maslow was “correct” is still hotly contested. Wahba and Bridwell’s literature review of research on Maslow concludes that his theory has been generally disproven. That review, however, focused on research inside the workplace. Another seminal report, Tay and Diener’s “Needs and Subjective Well Being Around the World,” found there are specific categories of need that are consistent across cultures, and there is some suggestion of a needs “hierarchy” that is more fluid than Maslow suggested. They did not explicitly mention self-actualization in their survey, choosing instead of examine individuals’ feelings of mastery/pride in work, self-direction, and autonomy. However, in speaking about the study, one of its authors did refer to self-actualization, noting, “An important departure from Maslow’s theory is that we found that a person can report having good social relationships and self-actualization even if their basic needs and safety needs are not completely fulfilled.”

In short,  while the term continues to be bandied about with some regularity, there does not appear to be one agreed-upon definition of self-actualization and there is a lack of empirical support for Maslow’s hierarchy. In popular literature, Maslow’s pyramid is referred to “quaint and old-fashioned and badly in need of updating.” There is also another, more philosophical critique of the self-actualization idea that questions Maslow’s assumption of there being a stable Self that merely needs to be “actualized.” We didn’t find studies that directly take Maslow to task for this (and we may be  exaggerating his essentialism as we haven’t read his work ourselves), but it seems inherent in the way that postmodern theorists and identity studies scholars talk about identity formation.  From our vantage points as neophytes in psychological research, however, it appears that the concept of self-actualization has been folded into broader discussions of psychic wellbeing, and may be the cornerstone of the burgeoning field of “positive psychology,” which studies the conditions that make people happy as opposed to the conditions/symptoms of psychological distress.

Lacking an agreed-upon definition of what self-actualization is and how it can be achieved, we had difficulty moving forward on the majority of our other research questions. However, we did find a few tidbits here and there.  A rough summary of  questions and relevant notes follows:

• What is the relationship between self-actualization and overall life satisfaction? Have there been any studies looking at both?
  • A 2004 study by Vitterso argues that self-actualization and subjective wellbeing are two separate things. The author cites a lot of literature in outlining the two concepts. Interestingly, Vitterso doesn’t cite Maslow on self-actualization and indeed we’re not sure how closely Vitterso’s use of the term resonates with Maslow (Vitterso certainly isn’t interested in the hierarchy of needs). For Vitterso, SWB is a form of happiness that is related to “being” while self-actualization is related to “doing.” Without reading up on the literature that Vitterso cites, we can’t tell how/if “self-actualization” differs from a more general sense of “personal development.” Vitterso’s use of the term certainly seems to imply that its the process of self-actualization that is important (i.e. that makes people happy) rather than being self-actualized.  Vitterso concludes that “that traditional measurements of SWB are insensitive to important aspects of human lives, and that the concept misses important aspects of psychological well-being.”
  • Tay and Diener’s international survey of subjective wellbeing doesn’t mention self-actualization at all, but instead uses terms of self-direction and autonomy.

• What is the relationship between self-actualization and more “basic” needs? Is it possible to reach self-actualization without other needs having been met first?
  • From article on “Renovating the pyramid of needs”: The researchers state in the article that while self-actualization is interesting and important, it isn’t an evolutionarily fundamental need. Instead, many of the activities that Maslow labeled as self-actualizing (artistic creativity, for example) reflect more biologically basic drives to gain status, which in turn serves the goal of attracting mates.
  • Tay and Diener found that while there is some evidence of a consistent hierarchy across countries, it is indeed possible to fulfill “higher” needs first — i.e. to report strong social relationships and feelings of love and belonging without necessarily having all basic needs secured.

• How do scholars who specialize in self-actualization see the arts fitting in? What are examples of other pathways to self-actualization that don’t involve the arts
  • There doesn’t seem to be much research that addresses this specifically. (We found a few articles that purport to look at the relationship between a specific art form and self-actualization, but they did not not appear to be robust studies.) The closest parallel might be Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow,” which is frequently brought up in discussion of creativity and education. Flow is not specific to the arts, however; it can be achieved through any individual activity provided that activity triggers the right combination of passion and challenge in a given person.

• Do we have any idea how many people are self-actualized, whatever that means? How would one go about estimating this?
  • If the initial scan of the Vitterso study is correct, self-actualization doesn’t refer to a state which some people have reached and others haven’t, it refers to the a person’s relationship to a particular task/experience. Vitterso cites the theory of “flow” experiences which roughly states that people are most happy when they are challenged but able to fulfill the task.

Where do we go from here?

Unless we want to come up with our own definition of the term, self-actualization may be a dead end. However, further investigation of how psychologists and other researchers characterize subjective wellbeing, and the relationship between SWB and autonomy and creativity may be warranted. It may also be worth looking into how SWB manifests across communities, not just individuals — one critique of Maslow’s pyramid is that it is oriented to an individual’s experience at the expense of collective experience. Arts engagement cultivates both, and Tay and Diener’s work touches on how the attributes of a specific country or community can influence the likelihood of individuals reporting higher SWB.