Imagine a medical doctor who never goes to the clinic and never publicizes availability for care. Instead, the doctor provides care when close friends need help or when an emergency occurs in their presence. While these acts are good in and of themselves, one could not help but wonder whether the doctor’s approach maximizes their potential positive impact.

Positive psychologists often act like that. Like the doctor, we have specialized knowledge. We run studies and test theories. We accomplish things in our smaller circles. But without diminishing the value of these acts, one cannot help—as with our imaginary doctor—but wonder whether we could sometimes do more.

While influencing public policy is not the only means to “do more,” it is (we believe) an undervalued avenue. Public policymakers are, to some degree, in need of the very thing we can (but often do not) provide.

Consider that public policy creators confront conflicting requests. Some voices ask for dismantling of camps for the unhoused, while others favor leniency. Some want programming to address the Mental health of all schoolkids, while others worry these programs distract from education or may even be harmful. Others want more dollars for police enforcement while still others want less. Policy creators thus often want guidance. Absent guidance, they might follow their intuition or the most confident-sounding “researcher.” Psychologists can help.

How best to help? In this piece, we briefly explore three ways that positive psychology can impact public policy.

1. Emphasize measurable well-being

Public officials often focus on brass-tacks issues such as better housing, education, transit, recreation opportunities, or public safety.

However, their impact on well-being is an implicit goal in almost all of those. People want better housing and transit so they can live happier lives. They want to be safe so that the subjective quality of their lives improves. Curiously, however, well-being is often omitted from formal discussion in policy procedures. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time: It forms the backbone of almost every policy aim and yet is less often pursued in its own right.

Why is that? We suspect it is because the brass-tacks issues have measurable outcomes—and policymakers perceive that “well-being” is too ephemeral to be measured.

That’s where psychologists, and perhaps especially positive psychologists, can help. Well-being no longer represents an unmeasurable ephemeral concept. The field has produced and refined legitimate scientific tools. Indeed, when we started in psychology, measures of personality and many other variables were well-established, but measures of well-being were treated with some suspicion. Since then, many studies have supported the value of well-being measures.

As a result, one way we as psychologists can improve public policy is to consistently remind policymakers that well-being can be measured just like housing costs or educational tests scores. Well-being measurement is not some elusive Platonic ideal—we can find well-validated tools that assess which factors facilitate flourishing along many dimensions, including hedonic, eudaimonic, physical health, and generic happiness (for a review of some, see our 2016 overview).

Thus, when policymakers turn to the academy for recommendations, we can put front and center our history of measurement of well-being. When studying the impact of a training program in a shelter for people who lack housing, psychological well-being of those receiving the treatment can be measured rather than measuring only items designed to facilitate well-being. Current public policy issues are often framed in well-being terms—and we have tools needed to provide policy recommendations. From the effects of artificial intelligence to social media usage, an array of studies exist showing the validity of our well-being tools in aiding policymakers.

2. Leverage flourishing and trust

One of us has often asked students to guess which psychological variables are most strongly associated with psychological well-being. None of the students have ever guessed “generalized trust,” even though trust consistently predicts well-being, with effects as large as many more widely known measures.

Indeed, generalized trust receives limited attention among academics (for exceptions, see some of the World Happiness Reports). Policymakers, too, often underestimate the importance of trust, so one way to influence policy is to remind policymakers of the importance of building trust in order to enable flourishing. Both general trust (e.g., “Do you think most people would return money to the owner if they found a wallet containing $200?”) and institutional trust (e.g., “Do you think the government can be trusted?” “Do you think corporations are corrupt?”) have surprisingly strong relations with well-being. Trust facilitates community, relations with neighbors, and conversations with strangers.

Misperceptions often create mistrust. For example, most people underestimate the proportion of others who act in trustworthy ways, as when most people underestimate how many individuals will return money found in lost wallets. Policymakers would be well-served to understand the difference between mistrust based on false perceptions and that which is at least partly justified, and psychologists are well-placed to help with that. Highlighting the trust findings can help policymakers focus on policies most likely to matter.

Sometimes those policies can focus on correcting misperceptions. Consider, though, what hurts trust among people. Mistrust can emerge when publicized incidents provoke fear; for example, if public spaces become truly more dangerous, then trust will decline. 

3. Promote positive institutions

Positive psychologists study three main topics: positive emotional states (i.e., well-being), positive traits (i.e., virtue and character), and positive institutions. Remember the third. Work with institutions. They help define your society. 

In our graduate studies, we received no training on collaborating with public institutions. A few strategies have helped us greatly:

Their guide suggests, for example, that elected leaders and government administrators often won’t read even short written summaries of policy-relevant research that academics provide. However, those same leaders might:

• give you an in-person meeting;
• direct their staff to join them in sitting through a presentation and question period from you; or
• attend an hours-long public event where you present the ideas, all if you ask, and especially if you find a trusted person to facilitate the contact.

Initially, that sounded nonsensical to us, and disappointing after our many hours writing brief engaging summaries of research! Now, these recommendations are in accord with our observations. These interactions matter.

We’ve also learned that government-funded institutions often have limited education budgets for their staff but want to do training. If you gain respect, they may be open to you providing training to their leaders. If you don’t present your conclusions, others, who might lack a scientific foundation, will present theirs.

Proceed with confidence and humility

No research is infallible.

You can proceed with the confidence earned by well-validated science, but also mention qualifications or uncertainty. Policymakers often prefer simple answers, so social pressure discourages intellectual humility. Don’t let that preference for simplicity capture your thinking. We may be trusted more in the long run by presenting our data while admitting uncertainties or exceptions.

Let’s return to a medical metaphor. In medicine, if a prostate cancer test correctly identified 90% of men who have prostate cancer, but only 2% of men had prostate cancer, then the odds are that many positives would be false positives; in fact, most positives would probably be false positives.

That potential error does not disqualify the test—but ignoring the error would have bad consequences for everyone. Likewise, if our measures of well-being or measures of ill-being become widely used to screen students for further attention, we could recommend a test confidently and yet also need to continually remind users of the frequency of errors. Overdiagnosis could change student perceptions in unhealthy ways. Neglecting to emphasize the errors could harm people and undermine our credibility. 

Adopt a strategy of confidence in the science while providing frequent reminders of necessary qualifications.