We are excited to announce the theme for the 2024 jSchool:

Economy of Well-Being: Harnessing Behavioral Science for Resilient Societies

The economy of well-being is a decision-making framework emphasizing the importance of well-being and quality of life as goals of long-term economic growth, societal resilience, and stability. It goes beyond traditional measures of economic success, such as the GDP, and prioritizes human and planetary needs instead. Economic growth and well-being can support and reinforce one another, for instance via high-quality education, health care, social protection, and redistribution and by achieving gender equality. To support this, behavioral science offers valuable insights into understanding and addressing the behaviors relevant to promoting well-being economies.

We are delighted to invite project proposals from current PhD students and early-career postdoctoral researchers interested in psychological contributions to the Economy of Well-being (broadly defined). We welcome scientific study proposals from all psychological disciplines (e.g., social, clinical, health, political, work and organizational, educational). Several examples are provided below.

Example projects include but are not limited to:

1. How can we encourage public support for sustainable and healthy policies (see Bergquist et al., 2022; Drews & Van den Berg, 2016)?
2. How do gender stereotypes relate to gender equality (see Breda et al., 2020)?
3. How does nature-based therapy affect mental health and well-being (see Kotera et al., 2020)?
4. Do health co-benefits stimulate environmental action (see Reismann et al., 2021)?
5. How do historical narratives affect political ideologies and preparation for future crises (see Sprengholz et al., 2023)?
6. How can we increase socially responsible and sustainable investments (see Gutsche & Ziegler, 2019)?

Stay tuned for more details on this year’s jSchool. The supervisor applications will be announced shortly.

In the meantime, questions about the theme can be directed to Ms. Elisabeth Sievert, Research Officer 2024-25, researchofficer@pscholars.org.