Systemic, structural change has always been a part of the perspective of the Greater Good Science Center. In a 2022 essay, editor Jeremy Adam Smith defines structural forces in the context of our work this way:
Slavery was a structural force, setting a stubborn pattern of social, cultural, economic, and interpersonal relationships between Black and white Americans that persists to this day. The family is a force structured by laws about marriage, divorce, taxes, reproductive health, children—and the power men have historically had over those laws. Your social network is a structure shaped by interactions with other structures: where you went to school, the work you do, your gender, your race, your religion—everything about you that connects you to others.
Structural forces are usually invisible to individuals, in day-to-day life; they’re something that becomes visible through study, concentration, and awareness. As is often the case with the weather, most of us generally don’t notice the laws and institutions that shape our lives until a storm of some kind blows in.
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In that piece, he walks the reader through case studies of how social conditions and public policies substantially affected well-being in different populations. And through the years, we’ve published hundreds of research briefs, essays, and other kinds of articles that have explored how forces like economic inequality, racism, and sexism shape well-being. We’ve also looked at factors like urban planning, laws and government programs, workplace policies, and so on.
Almost all of these articles draw on sociology, economics, history, anthropology, and political science, as opposed to our usual beats of psychology and neuroscience. One of the upshots of this research is that you can in fact improve, sometimes dramatically, mental health and happiness through public and workplace policies—and it is debatably the case that these policies can do more to increase a society’s overall happiness than individual-level practices like meditation or gratitude practices.
That doesn’t mean your choices and practices don’t matter; in fact, they can matter a great deal to your personal well-being. Your genetic inheritance can play a role, as well. But research finds that those factors are always interacting with social reality to shape your well-being—and paying consistent attention to what social situations, structural forces, and public policies are most likely to bring out the best in people has been part of the mission of the Greater Good Science Center since its inception.
This gathering of articles is by no means comprehensive; for the sake of brevity, we’re skipping over many important issues and populations. We hope, however, that this page can serve as an introduction to structural well-being to all who want to understand how to maximize human happiness.
Click to jump to a section:
- The Big Picture
- How Economic and Workplace Policies Shape Well-Being
- How Urban Design and Environment Affect Well-Being
- How Social Forces Affect Caregivers, Children, and Families
- How Policies and Social Conditions Shape Prejudice and Well-Being
