Shigehiro Oishi
Marshall Field IV Professor of Psychology, University of Chicago
Co-author of the 2022 paper that established psychological richness as a third dimension of a good life — winner of the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Citation, not endorsement
The researchers named on this page are independent scientists with no connection to The Three Lives. They did not create, advise on, review or endorse this test, and they are not affiliated with it in any way. We cite their published, peer-reviewed work and link to every paper so you can read the source yourself. Where the evidence is thin, we say so, in the sentence that uses it.
The published work
Shigehiro Oishi is one of the most cited researchers on well-being and culture. After his PhD at the University of Illinois, working with Ed Diener, he spent many years at the University of Virginia before joining the University of Chicago.
His work asks how place, mobility, culture and history shape what people consider a good life — and whether the answer is the same everywhere. He has published hundreds of papers and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Together with Erin Westgate he proposed that happiness and meaning are not the whole story: some people choose, and value, a life full of variety, interest and perspective change, even when it is neither especially pleasant nor especially meaningful. That paper received the Society for Personality and Social Psychology's Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize.
How The Three Lives uses this work
The three-dimension framework: Happiness, Meaning and Psychological Richness.
Relevant papers
Oishi, S., & Westgate, E. C. (2022)
A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning ↗Psychological Review, 129(4), 790–811
The core theory. Defines the three independent dimensions this test measures.
Oishi, S., Choi, H., Buttrick, N., et al. (2019)
The psychologically rich life questionnaire ↗Journal of Research in Personality, 81, 257–270
Shows richness can be measured separately from happiness and meaning.
Oishi, S., Choi, H., Koo, M., et al. (2020)
Happiness, meaning, and psychological richness ↗Affective Science, 1, 107–115
Cross-cultural evidence that a meaningful minority prefers a rich life above the other two.