The third wave and beyond: A conversation with Tim Lomas, PhD
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photo by silas baisch on unsplash
If you’ve ever contributed to MAPP Magazine, you already know this is a collaborative effort. What you may not realize is how inspiring it is as well. There’s no way either of us could create the depth, quality, and scope of content featured in this online publication every other month on our own. And as we wrap on another issue of MAPP Magazine, we’re reminded of the gift of getting to work alongside one another, fellow MAPP alumni, and industry experts to bring forth and illuminate their strengths and wonderful work.
To punctuate this issue on community and collective well-being, which features articles on collective effervescence, cultivating connection, and politics and positive public service, we’re pleased to share excerpts from our conversation with Tim Lomas, PhD., one of positive psychology’s foremost researchers and thought leaders on the topic.
In this article, Dr. Lomas explores the complexities and nuances of community and collective well-being and distinguishes it from the related topic of flourishing. Read on for some of his newest insights and personal musing about the importance and urgency to not only consider the culture and context characteristic of positive psychology’s third wave, but also to move beyond it.
We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.
MM: Will you please share with us about yourself, your work, and its intersection with positive psychology.
TL: I grew up in London, and I guess the first interesting thing to mention is that when I turned 19, I moved to China to teach English for six months before starting university. It was a mind-blowing experience in so many ways. It expanded my horizon, experientially and physically, but also cognitively and intellectually. I encountered so many ideas that I was mesmerized and mystified by.
I traveled around a lot and visited many Taoist and Buddhist monasteries. I encountered and was intrigued by these traditions and also found them hard to grapple with and to make sense of. . . You often couldn’t translate them, and it was hard to understand them—terms like Nirvana. They had these intricate theories of the mind and well-being—so fascinating. And I realized I had so much to learn. It was not just me, but also the culture I'm from. I realized how much I didn't know, and how much there was to discover in the world.
I suppose I mention this because I [went] back to Britain to study psychology at Edinburgh, and it was good. Now, I would say it was very Western centric, although I’m not sure I would have used that same phrase back then. But having just spent that time in China, I [noticed] none of [those theories of mind were] in the textbooks. Mindfulness was creeping in, but that was it.
There are these incredible concepts and taxonomies and theories that are relevant to psychology—they’re evergreen with so many insights. But I had this sense that the psychology I was learning—it wasn’t wrong—but it was partial. That really stayed with me.
For six or seven years after that, I took a detour, trying to be a professional musician. I would have loved for that to have worked out, but there’s not that much money in ska music! [joke] We toured and recorded, but at the same time, I had an eye on getting back into psychology. I also had a part-time job as a nursing assistant, taking shifts when I needed them at a psychiatric hospital. You can imagine what those places were like— there was a lot of hardship and distress, especially in the locked ward. And then I would do gigs in the evenings—it really was a strange existence. But all of it was intensely meaningful—especially the [experiences] in the hospital. [They] really affirmed my sense of wanting to work in psychology.
For a time, I thought I would train to be a psychotherapist. But I also [got] this scholarship for a PhD in London with three academics. It really was right up my street because it was about meditation and Buddhism and men's mental health. We were looking at the impact of meditation on men’s mental health—coming at it from a few different angles.
I loved doing that PhD. Right after it, I got a job as a lecturer at the University of East London, where we had our own MAPP program. Research-wise—around 2015 or 2016—I got back around to that idea about psychology being Western-centric and missing out on ideas and insights from other cultures. [It started] with a project on untranslatable words (inspired by an IPPA session with MAPP alumnae, Elisabet Lahti, about a construct which overlaps with grit and resilience called sisu—read more about that here). Seeds had been planted all the way back in China, but it crystallized these ideas. . . the idea for this lexicography took shape when I came back to London. . .
A collection of [other untranslatable] words together is a nice way into another culture. If they have a word that we don't have in English, that's significant. It means they’ve noticed something or they value something that we don't. Something we’ve overlooked, or they’ve looked at with more detail and engagement. These words give us glimpses into the values and ideals of other cultures. I thought this could be one way to help redress this Western-centricity of psychology. I was enthusiastic about it for a while, but I am enthusiastic about other things, too. It’s not gone away, but it’s in the background for now.
I came to the [United] States in 2020, and then in 2021, I joined the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, where I’ve been a psychology research scientist. It’s this amazing program run by a real visionary called Tyler Vanderweel. Quite honestly, he’s a genius—a real polymath, with degrees in all these different things. Primarily, he’s a statistician and an epidemiologist [who is] passionately interested in human well-being and flourishing. . .
[Tyler] wanted to bring his epidemiological perspective to bear on human flourishing. He’s assembled this diverse, interdisciplinary team, with philosophers, historians, theologians, and sociologists. And we’re working on all these things together, but coming at it from all these different angles. It’s been a wonderful experience.
We have lots of interesting and exciting projects. The main one at the moment is the Global Flourishing Study (GFS). It’s in full flow now, and we have the first wave of data from 2023, [which] we’ve been analyzing this year.
I’m working on a bunch of [papers] and helping to lead the cultural working group within the overall project. One of the things I’m trying to lead is a series of papers focused on each [of the 22 countries in the study]. I'm trying to work with people in or from those countries. They’re leading the papers, and I'm just facilitating that process.
Some of the papers are focusing on a single construct. . . but then another way into the data is to take all the constructs—the survey has 109 items, so it’s quite comprehensive—[from the perspective of] a single country. . . It's a wonderful project, which I really love. So that brings us up to right now, because that’s what we’re working on currently.
MM: That's amazing! Thank you for sharing. As you know, the issue we’re working on is about collective well-being. In your own words and from your perspective, what do you think of as collective well-being, and why do you think it’s important?
TL: Yeah, I think it's so important.
The first thing I want to mention is that in the Human Flourishing Program, we’ve been talking about and wanting to develop this conception of flourishing. It really touches these issues quite deeply.
I think you could say positive psychology has a tendency to be somewhat individualistic, including notions of well-being, which are about what's going on with a person inside their own mind. And you can make a case that people could experience well-being despite even inhospitable circumstances. So well-being, I think, is something you can apply to individuals. It’s not really about their context, although I think it’s strongly influenced by it. But really, [well-being] is more of a property of individual sentient agents.
What we're trying to do with flourishing is to have a much broader picture. So, it's about a person and their context both doing well—to the point where if their context wasn't doing well, you couldn't really say that they're flourishing. So, if you take a dramatic circumstance like being in a war zone or a climate crisis, you can imagine that people can still experience well-being. But to me, they’re not really flourishing, because [flourishing] is also about the context doing well.
Flourishing takes into account non-human systems like the environment and other things like the architecture and economy. And most directly here, it takes into account other people. So again, you can't really say a person is flourishing if they're walking past homeless people, because [their] context and the people in [their] context aren’t doing well. [Flourishing] is reorienting our attention to . . . a wider context that includes non-human systems too. For me, flourishing is already about social well-being.
One model I found useful in our work was a model I created a while back called the Life Model. We’ve adapted it more recently and called it the Flexible Map of Flourishing. In fact, James Pawelski is on that paper, too. So, James, Tyler, and I have updated the Life Model into this Flexible Map of Flourishing. We’ve tried to approach [a person’s] context in a nuanced way by stratifying it using Bronfenbrenner’s ecology, the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. . . Really, I think of social well-being at all those levels.
The microsystem is your immediate environment—your home, your family, your classroom, or your workplace. First, you have to think about social well-being in those terms. You know, how is the environment conducive to the flourishing of people in that context? But it’s not just the question of people getting along together. You can imagine, there are systemic issues (e.g., how long are the working hours? What are the pressures?). So, [flourishing] is not just about people being kinder to one another. It’s also about the systems that are in place in [our] environments, . . and whether those environments are conducive or unconducive to people's well-being.
I think there’s also this interesting gestalt—an intersubjectivity—where people can share emotions and feelings, and a group consciousness can emerge. There’s a group dynamic that’s not at the level of the person. I think you can think about well-being at the level of the group. It’s not just about how group dynamics affect the individual psychological states of the people in the group. It’s also about the property of the group as this emergent phenomenon (e.g., family dynamics).
Next, you have to think about the mesosystem, which is the interaction between microsystems (e.g, work-life balance or social capital). A person might love their home life and love their work life, but together, there may be a kind of tension or competition between the two. The issue is not in the home or in the workplace, but rather the mesosystemic level between them.
Another example is in bonding within a group and bridging between groups. . . These are mesosystemic issues when you must not only consider how well a group gets on, but also how well they get on in relation to other groups.
The exosystem is the broader community (e.g., the city in which one lives). You can think of collective well-being in those terms. The Life Model and this Flexible Map [distinguish] between the intersubjective (e.g., norms, values, customs, and cultures) and interobjective (e.g., provision of social services or the extent to which people in the community are cared for). All of that is influenced by the macrosystem (e.g., the economic, legal, and political systems in a country). Who are the politicians in charge, and what are their policies? How are they driving the system through levels beneath them? There’s a strong top-down influence, but it’s not all top-down. Public policies influence what happens at the lower levels, but influence can also go bottom-up. Individuals can influence those higher levels.
Outside the macrosystem is the ecosystem (e.g., the environment and non-human forms of consciousness and well-being, like animals and the planet). I think of collective and social well-being at all of those different levels in both subjective and objective terms.
MM: Thank you for that. Collectivism is commonly associated with Eastern or sub-Saharan cultures, whereas many perceive individualism as more of a Western value. We found it interesting that some of your work suggests otherwise. Will you comment on this and discuss the implications?
TL: Yeah, it's interesting, and it's hard to know what to make of it. We asked: Do you think people should focus more on themselves or more on others? We coded [the options] in advance as being individualistic versus collectivistic. But it turned out there were more people saying they should focus more on themselves in Eastern cultures.
There are so many things to say about that in terms of caveats and potential interpretations. It gets very complex, you know. We had a back and forth with the reviewers because it’s hard to interpret the question—as a remedy or as normative. It could be the case that those answers reflect what people think is missing and needed, or as one reviewer commented, there are ways to interpret self-sufficiency as quite collectivistic (e.g., people should focus more on themselves so they aren’t a burden to the group).
Honestly, my take on it is that I know there’s this tendency to see the East as more collectivist and the West as more individualistic, but I think it’s more complicated than that. For example, West and East are problematic; they’re such strange terms. If I think of the West as the United States, it’s made up of people from everywhere, including many people from the East. I struggle to even situate the US as Western, although I know it is. The US is heterogeneous, evolving, and dynamic—it’s a complex place that’s hard for me to pigeonhole as Western. And same too with the East. People have these ideas of the East and West, but they might be based on the states of countries in the 19th century.
Actually, I wrote another paper looking at the notions of East versus West. These notions are evolving, and what constitutes East versus West has really changed over the centuries. . . Now, a place like China—with the rate of development, the levels of capitalism, and consumerism—is also a perplexing place. It's hard to pigeonhole these countries according to traditional ideas of East and West. We tend to have these stereotypical ideas, and I think part of what that paper was doing was saying that it’s much more of a complicated picture. With things like industrialization and globalization, there’s a general movement toward individualism across the world. All countries are trending toward becoming more individualistic. And you can see counter movements as a reaction to that with countries becoming more communitarian or collectivistic.
I'm not sure what to do with these generalizations. We still need to use categories and groupings. But I think what I'm trying to do in all my work is to show how nuanced and complex the picture is—getting away from generalizations and stereotypes.
MM: Great. It’s awesome to hear you talk about—thank you for that. Our audience is made up of practitioners—many of whom know the third wave of positive psychology is moving toward and considering the collective. What would you say to these practitioners about how to do that and how to advance the field at not only an individual level but also a societal one?
TL: I would say we need to always be reflective and cognizant of systems and culture.
It is really valuable to give and practice positive interventions. And I'm still a great believer in meditation. But that's often not enough. There's a risk in companies using that sticking plaster to mask a toxic environment. Like the structures and systems are really stressful, but let’s just tell people to meditate so they feel better. When you see a company introducing meditation practices, [pay attention to whether] it’s also looking at things systemically (e.g., the burdens on people or their workload). Individual-level remedies and practices definitely have their place, but they shouldn’t be instead of this more systemic perspective. So, to the extent you can, if you’re working with a company to help them work on employee well-being, it’s a good idea to have a chat with the managers—to ask about the management culture and the systems, about the structures in place rather than just an intervention that is going to target the individual.
There’s also thinking about culture—getting outside our own [experiences]—just appreciating the diversity of perspectives and backgrounds that people have. These principles of diversity, equity, inclusion—everything is embedded within that. Meeting people where they are and not imposing your own ideas upon them. Being open to their own stories, backgrounds, and values. Thinking about cultural sensitivities. . .
I’m not really a practitioner, so I struggle sometimes with what to say. But I think having that awareness of cultures and systems is really important. I think that’s an expression of this third-wave idea.
MM: Although this issue was focused on community and collective flourishing and well-being, we wanted to leave room for you to share more. What else are you researching, thinking, and learning about these days? You’ve discussed how your work has evolved and shared a bit about the other projects you’re working on. What are you most excited about?
TL: One thing I think that's relevant and quite interesting is more about nature and the environment.
You know, I had this idea of waves of psychology—the first wave, the second wave, and then the third wave. But what occurred to me with the third wave—which is more global and getting beyond this Western-centric approach—is that it’s still human-centric. When I thought about what could be next, the fourth wave, which I wrote a paper about in the Journal of Positive Psychology—would be going beyond the human to non-human forms of consciousness and well-being. That being something we should also pay attention to and think about from different angles—partly in a spirit of enlightened self-interest. It's in our interest that the environment is doing well. But then [we must also consider it] morally for their own sake. So, expanding our sphere of concern and moral interest to animals and the environment.
From there, it gets more speculative, esoteric, and trippy. You can even expand it to AI systems, that’s obviously a big conversation. Questions around AI systems—are they conscious? What does that mean in terms of how we engage with them around value alignment and making sure we build AI systems that aren’t going to harm humans? There are interesting conversations about the obligations also going the other way. If an AI system can be conscious, there are ways we should be treating it rather than treating it like a battery-farmed animal that we work for our own purposes.
I think there’s a whole interesting conversation about going beyond the human. I guess I'm thinking [about that in] a lot of different ways. And even into more speculative territory around spirits and spirituality and those kinds of ideas. That's a bit far out to go into here, but I do think about it a lot.
Generally, I’m trying to think about non-human forms of consciousness and well-being. But most directly, the environment and animals and the planet we’re on because it’s a truism to say we’re in a kind of crisis.
Mike Steger wrote a great paper about positive psychology in the climate crisis and how that ought to be shaping our ideas. There’s also the work of Holli-anne Passmore about how we connect to, think about, and relate to the environment, how we can engage in environmental behaviors. Just rethinking our approach to life on this planet. Like I said, it's for the sake of non-human forms of life for their own sake but also for our own well-being. It’s obviously so inextricably linked to the state of the planet and the environment.
I’ve been doing some papers on environmental variables and how they impact well-being—how we think about the environment and relate to it. So, I guess that I’m particularly passionate at the moment about those kinds of things. Partly because it also does feel so urgent in terms of the climate crisis.
You know, it's funny, I actually did this paper we’re going to submit soon reviewing the extent to which papers on the environment have appeared in the Journal of Positive Psychology, and there are relatively few in the last few years. I also reviewed the Journal of Environment Psychology to see the extent to which they explored positive psychology topics, which is quite a lot. So there's a good crossover. I just think positive psychology can do a lot more to think environmentally. I think it's good if the third wave is getting stronger, but we also need to think in terms of the planet and the environment.
MM: That’s really amazing to hear. I (Josey) wrote my capstone about psychedelics and nature relatedness and how that can usher in a new era of relating better to the environment—for the planet’s sake and our sake.
TL: Oh, that's really cool. Ok, great!
MM: Is there anything more you’d like to discuss or that you would have liked us to ask about?
TL: I think we covered a lot of it. Is there anything else you wanted to ask?
MM: No, I think we’d both say this has been a fantastic conversation. It’s encouraging to hear you acknowledge our contexts and complexities, challenging to consider how to apply some of these ideas, and enlightening to think about and also beyond humanity. It’s really been a pleasure.
TL: That's awesome. Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed this, too.
For more on Tim’s work, including the Global Wellbeing Initiative, and data from the 22-country Global Flourishing Study, check out these open-access resources:
If you’d like to join us in sharing more inspiring applications of positive psychology, please consider contributing to MAPP Magazine.
About the expert | Tim Lomas, PhD is a Psychology Research Scientist at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, with a particular interest in cross-cultural perspectives on well-being. In a previous life, he was a singer in a ska band, a psychiatric nursing assistant, and an English teacher in China.
