<p>Is psychological well-being positively influenced by physiological well-being (and vice versa) ?</p>
<p>And conversely is psychological well-being positively impacted by physiological suffering (and vice versa)?</p>
<p>I have searched for medical or psychological research on the subject. Although the results of the studies I have found go in the sense of responding affirmatively to these questions (yes physiological well-being positively impacts psychological well-being, and physiological suffering negatively impacts psychological well-being), yet these studies tend to focus on health, that is, more extreme conditions such as chronic illness, based on vast cohort of patients*.</p>
<p>My question concerns more day-to-day conditions (high level of energy, feeling of good health; fatigue, mild stomach pain, mild headache), which I refer to as &quot;physiological well-being/suffering&quot; at the individual level, and the <em>direct</em> mechanic correlation between psychological and physiological and well-being.</p>
<p>I suppose that constructionist and appraisal theories of emotions would predict that it does, but I unfortunately did not find such research and results.</p>
<p>*By that I mean the kind of study which find a positive correlation between the consumption of green tea and good health based on questionnaires concerning people life habits, but with no investigation of the mechanical factors at play at the individual level, so that researchers don't know if there is really a <em>direct</em> impact of green tea consumption on good health.</p>
<p><strong>Precisions:</strong></p>
<p>To investigate this question, the experiment could go like this:</p>
<p>Recruit 200 volunteers on the Internet, give them an APP, and something like 5 times a day for 1 month ask them something like five questions concerning their psychological and physiological states at the particular moment the question pops up on the APP: &quot;How does your stomach feel?&quot;, &quot;Do you feel physically energetic and light?&quot;, &quot;Do you feel anxious?&quot;, &quot;Do you feel sad?&quot;. We could find associations between psychological and physiological well-being not explained by chance.</p>
<p>Other methods I can think of (with a laboratory and biological and psychological manipulations of the patients states) would be ethically and practically difficult to conduct.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-03T13:38:48.290Z
What does "always or almost always" mean? Generally these things are treated as more or less continuous measures rather than a binary.
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-03T13:56:23.703Z
@BryanKrause Removed the "always or almost always". Thanks for your help :)
Starckman
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-03T13:56:33.637Z
Not sure what the best solution is; maybe start from imagining the experiment that would test the question you're asking. What would it look like?
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-03T14:04:07.777Z
@BryanKrause Very simple: I would recruit 200 volunteers on the Internet, give them an APP, and something like 5 times a day for 1 month ask them something like five questions concerning their psychological and physiological states at the particular moment the question pops up on the APP: "How does your stomach feel?" "Do you feel physically energetic and light?" "Do you feel anxious" "Do you feel sad?" We could find associations between psychological and physiological well-being not explained by chance
Starckman
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-03T14:08:46.833Z
Sounds reasonable - yeah, I think your edits work then. You could operationalize your experiment described with "are psychological/physiological wellbeing correlated". But of course, correlation does not mean perfect prediction, which was sort of implied (I assume unintentionally) by the previous wording.
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-03T14:16:54.087Z
@BryanKrause Now I realize this wording was because I hesitated in between finding a concomitant association (always or not always concomitant with) or finding an impact of one on the other. In the research experiment proposed, we search in a fine-grained manner whether they are both concomitant with one another, and from this fine-grained association, if any, we could conclude that they have reciprocal impact
Starckman
<well-being><health-psychology>
Is psychological well-being positively influenced by physiological well-being (and vice versa)?
Starckman
# Is psychological well-being positively influenced by physiological well-being (and vice versa)?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-05-03)

Is psychological well-being positively influenced by physiological well-being (and vice versa) ?

And conversely is psychological well-being positively impacted by physiological suffering (and vice versa)?

I have searched for medical or psychological research on the subject. Although the results of the studies I have found go in the sense of responding affirmatively to these questions (yes physiological well-being positively impacts psychological well-being, and physiological suffering negatively impacts psychological well-being), yet these studies tend to focus on health, that is, more extreme conditions such as chronic illness, based on vast cohort of patients\*.

My question concerns more day-to-day conditions (high level of energy, feeling of good health; fatigue, mild stomach pain, mild headache), which I refer to as "physiological well-being/suffering" at the individual level, and the *direct* mechanic correlation between psychological and physiological and well-being.

I suppose that constructionist and appraisal theories of emotions would predict that it does, but I unfortunately did not find such research and results.

\*By that I mean the kind of study which find a positive correlation between the consumption of green tea and good health based on questionnaires concerning people life habits, but with no investigation of the mechanical factors at play at the individual level, so that researchers don't know if there is really a *direct* impact of green tea consumption on good health.

**Precisions:**

To investigate this question, the experiment could go like this:

Recruit 200 volunteers on the Internet, give them an APP, and something like 5 times a day for 1 month ask them something like five questions concerning their psychological and physiological states at the particular moment the question pops up on the APP: "How does your stomach feel?", "Do you feel physically energetic and light?", "Do you feel anxious?", "Do you feel sad?". We could find associations between psychological and physiological well-being not explained by chance.

Other methods I can think of (with a laboratory and biological and psychological manipulations of the patients states) would be ethically and practically difficult to conduct.

**Tags:** well-being, health-psychology

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: What does "always or almost always" mean? Generally these things are treated as more or less continuous measures rather than a binary.  
> **username_0**: @BryanKrause Removed the "always or almost always". Thanks for your help :)  
> **username_1**: Not sure what the best solution is; maybe start from imagining the experiment that would test the question you're asking. What would it look like?  
> **username_0**: @BryanKrause Very simple: I would recruit 200 volunteers on the Internet, give them an APP, and something like 5 times a day for 1 month ask them something like five questions concerning their psychological and physiological states at the particular moment the question pops up on the APP: "How does your stomach feel?" "Do you feel physically energetic and light?" "Do you feel anxious" "Do you feel sad?" We could find associations between psychological and physiological well-being not explained by chance  
> **username_1**: Sounds reasonable - yeah, I think your edits work then. You could operationalize your experiment described with "are psychological/physiological wellbeing correlated". But of course, correlation does not mean perfect prediction, which was sort of implied (I assume unintentionally) by the previous wording.  
> **username_0**: @BryanKrause Now I realize this wording was because I hesitated in between finding a concomitant association (always or not always concomitant with) or finding an impact of one on the other. In the research experiment proposed, we search in a fine-grained manner whether they are both concomitant with one another, and from this fine-grained association, if any, we could conclude that they have reciprocal impact  

---

## 0 answers

