World Well-Being Project

The Watercooler
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Some might find this interesting.

The World Well-Being Project (WWBP) is pioneering scientific techniques for measuring psychological well-being and physical health based on the analysis of language in social media.

As a collaboration between computer scientists, psychologists, and statisticians, we are shedding new light on the psychosocial processes that affect health and happiness and exploring the potential for our unobtrusive well-being measures to supplement – and in part replace – expensive survey methods.

Ultimately, we hope that our insights and analyses will help individuals, organizations, and governments choose actions and policies that are not just in the best economic interest of the people or companies, but which truly improve their well-being.

We are based out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center and Stony Brook University’s Human Language Analysis Lab. Our work has been made possible by the generous support of many organizations including the Templeton Religion Trust, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and others.

May compassionate intentions lead individual lives towards the Path of liberation from suffering.

:pray:

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This is based on a global movement which is seeing government move away from GDP and towards wellbeing as the central criterion for distributing funds. This has long been the policy in Bhutan with GNH (Gross National Happiness). New Zealand has recently introduced a wellbeing budget and the recent controversy over anti-meditation remarks by the Australian treasurer was in response to an opposition wellbeing budget suggestion. In the UK it is at the government advisory stage, but in the US is not on the horizon except for the OP project.

Along with the secular mindfulness movement, wellbeing shows an interesting global direction on a millennial scale.

Buddhist Economics:

Introduction to Buddhist Economics | SpringerLink.

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