Everyone strives for personal happiness and well-being; however, the definition of those concepts is manifold. Seligman (2002) suggested that important elements of happiness were positive emotion, engagement, and meaning in life. Later, he described elements of well-being as positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (Seligman, 2010). Diener (1984) defined well-being by external criteria such as virtue or holiness, the evaluation of one’s life in positive terms, and as a predominance of positive affect over negative affect. Next to happiness and well-being, the concept of flourishing exists. VanderWeele (2017) suggests looking more closely at flourishing as a broader concept of well-being. He argues that flourishing includes happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Diener et al. (2010) define flourishing as social-psychological prosperity and include human psychological needs, e.g., the need for competence, relatedness, and self-acceptance in their model of flourishing (see also Ryan and Deci, 2000).

Other authors define flourishing as one end of the mental health continuum on which the other end is languishing (Keyes, 2002) or consider flourishing “synonymous with a high level of mental well-being” (Huppert and So, 2013, p. 838). Moreover, flourishing means the presence of both hedonic (“feeling good”) and eudaimonic (“functioning well”) well-being (Schotanus-Dijkstra et al., 2016). According to this, it is evident that flourishing is a complex concept with many aspects (Hone et al., 2014). Chen et al. (2022) demonstrated that the six domains of flourishing, emotional health, physical health, meaning and purpose, character strengths, social connectedness, and financial security are independently associated with a greater composite flourishing score.

To measure flourishing, people are, for example, asked about their success in relationships, self-esteem, purpose, and optimism (Diener et al., 2010). However, there are also more complex measurements that measure the broader components of composite flourishing, for example, the 40-item flourishing index, which consists of items of former questionnaires to each of the dimensions mentioned above (Lee et al., 2020). Many studies have investigated factors that influence flourishing (Yildirim, 2019; Goldstein et al., 2021). They have found that flourishing is associated, among some socio-demographic characteristics, with high levels of extraversion and conscientiousness and low levels of neuroticism (Schotanus-Dijkstra et al., 2016). Being male, older, more educated, and married was connected to flourishing as well as superior profiles of psychosocial functioning (Keyes, 2002). Moreover, flourishing is correlated with essential need satisfaction (competency, relatedness, and autonomy) and with the factors of the Ryff scales (Ryff and Keyes, 1995, autonomy, mastery, growth, relationships, purpose, and self-acceptance) (Diener et al., 2010). Those studies provide evidence that connectedness is a relevant factor for flourishing. Wamsler and colleagues integrated the elements of compassion, empathy, kindness, and generosity into the concept of connectedness which are all related to pro-socialness and nature connectedness (Wamsler et al., 2021). According to this, it is important to investigate which aspect of connectedness is associated with people’s flourishing. For this, it is the main goal of this study to take a closer look at the relationships of flourishing with three aspects of connectedness: Connectedness with oneself (self-love), with others (pro-socialness), and with the surrounding nature (nature connectedness).

Correlations between all study variables are shown in Table 1. Significant positive correlations were found between flourishing and self-love, r = 0.734, and between flourishing and pro-socialness, r = 0.227. Furthermore, nature connectedness correlated positively with self-love, r = 0.279, and with pro-socialness, r = 0.352. Contrary to hypothesis 1, no significant correlations were found between flourishing and nature connectedness and between self-love and pro-socialness.

For hypothesis 2, a regression analysis with enter method was calculated with the criterion flourishing and the predictors self-love, pro-socialness, and nature connectedness. Overall, the analysis revealed that the model was significant and all predictors explained 57.5% of the variance of the criterion, F(3, 134) = 60.53, p < 0.001. Self-love, β = 0.742, p < 0.001, and pro-socialness, β = 0.206, p < 0.001, were significant predictors of flourishing while nature connectedness, β = −0.075, p = 0.232, was not (Table 2).

Hypothesis 3 was analyzed using Process (Model 4, Hayes, 2018). Indirect effects with nature connectedness or pro-socialness as mediators of the relationship between self-love and flourishing were not significant (see Supplementary Figure S1). The total, c = 0.734, 95%CI [0.859, 1.179], and the direct, c’ = 0.742, 95%CI [0.869, 1.191], effects of self-love on flourishing, were significant. Overall, the model was significant and all variables explained 57.5% of the variance of flourishing, R = 0.759, F(3, 134) = 60.534, p < 0.001.

Results of the present study showed significant associations between flourishing and two aspects of connectedness, namely self-love and pro-socialness. In line with hypothesis 1, we found strong correlations between self-love and flourishing as well as small correlations between pro-socialness and flourishing. Contrary to our assumptions, the third aspect of connectedness, nature connectedness, was not significantly correlated to self-love (after Bonferroni correction). Regarding correlations between the aspects of connectedness, nature connectedness was significantly correlated with self-love and pro-socialness, but self-love was not associated with pro-socialness. Hence, hypothesis 1 was only partly confirmed by the results. Regarding hypothesis 2, self-love and pro-socialness significantly predicted flourishing whereas nature connectedness was no significant predictor.

The correlations between self-love and flourishing are in line with results showing associations between self-love and well-being (Hernandez et al., 2016). Because the correlations in the present study were rather strong, it could be assumed that the questionnaires on self-love (Henschke and Sedlmeier, n.d.) and flourishing (Diener et al., 2010) have overlapping aspects. Especially, two items of the flourishing scale are “I am engaged and interested in my daily activities” and “I am competent and capable in the activities that are important to me” which are related to the two items of the self-love questionnaire: “I consciously decide with whom I spend my free time,” “I know which people and activities are good for me,” and “I do physical activities that are good for me.” Moreover, there are items in the self-love questionnaire (“I notice the signals of my body,” “I take time for myself”) that are prerequisites for the statements in the flourishing scale (“I am a good person and live a good live”). Apart from that there are statements in the flourishing scale regarding people’s social life (“My social relationships are supportive and rewarding,” “People respect me,” “I actively contribute to the happiness and well-being of others”) and their future (“I am optimistic about my future”) that have no corresponding statements in the self-love questionnaire. In conclusion, the strong correlation between self-love and flourishing could result from overlapping parts of the questionnaires and because aspects of self-love seem to be important to social-psychological prosperity or flourishing (Diener et al., 2010).

Pro-socialness was a positive predictor of flourishing. That result is in line with previous studies showing that prosocial behavior is connected to vitality or positive affect (Martela and Ryan, 2016) and that altruism is also associated with connectedness to life satisfaction (Becchetti et al., 2017). Moreover, the autonomous motive to help other people is associated with subjective well-being (Weinstein and Ryan, 2010).

Contrary to our hypothesis, nature connectedness was not significantly correlated to flourishing. Other studies and meta-analyses found small significant correlations between connectedness to nature and different aspects of well-being that ranged between 0.17 < r < 0.30 (Nisbet and Zelenski, 2013; Pritchard et al., 2020). In the present study, the correlation of nature connectedness and flourishing was within this range, too, but failed to reach significance. Another explanation for only small non-significant correlations could be that people with a higher nature connectedness worry more about the threat to the environment and their own future. Nisbet and Zelenski (2013) showed that nature connectedness was strongly associated with biospheric environmental concerns. More worry or concern could then be related to less flourishing. In the regression analysis, nature connectedness was no significant predictor of flourishing. That result could be because nature connectedness had small to medium relationships to self-love (Nisbet and Zelenski, 2013) and pro-socialness (Pirchio et al., 2021) and these factors were stronger predictors of flourishing than nature connectedness. Hence, besides self-love and pro-socialness, nature connectedness cannot explain the variance of flourishing incrementally.

Also contrary to our hypothesis, self-love was not associated with pro-socialness. Because self-love is a rather new empirically investigated concept, other studies examining self-love and prosocial behavior are rare. One study (Corral-Verdugo et al., 2021) found positive associations between altruistic behavior and self-care. Besides differences in the constructs of altruistic behavior vs. pro-socialness and self-love vs. self-care, Corral-Verdugo et al’s (2021) sample were Mexican adults from low, middle, and high socioeconomic strata. Our sample was approx. 15 years younger, from Germany, and highly educated (95% had at least 13 years of schooling).

The results of our study contribute to the existing literature on the associations between connectedness and flourishing. Self-love as a rather new construct was a strong predictor of people’s flourishing. This could be considered in interventions to enhance flourishing in healthy adults. Moreover, the correlation between pro-socialness and flourishing clarifies that it could be beneficial to encourage people to help others and engage themselves in prosocial activities. The small non-significant correlations between nature connectedness and flourishing should be analyzed in more detail in intervention studies. When higher concerns and worries in people with high nature connectedness are a reason for non-significant correlations, more nature contact could enhance people’s flourishing independent of their concerns. A mindfulness intervention could even reduce these worries (Delgado et al., 2010) to enhance the effect of a nature contact intervention.

This biased sample is a limitation of our study. Another limitation is that the questionnaires on self-love and flourishing could have overlapping items. Future research could use another measurement of flourishing that distinguishes for example the six different concepts of flourishing (Lee et al., 2020). Furthermore, other aspects of well-being, e.g., subjective well-being or life satisfaction, and other aspects of connectedness, e.g., connectedness to the transcendent could be examined. Besides this, the sample should be more diverse including, adolescents, older people, and less educated participants in the sample.

To conclude, self-love and pro-socialness had the strongest effect on people’s flourishing. For possible intervention programs to enhance flourishing in young adults, these two aspects of connectedness should be in the focus.

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found below: https://osf.io/v9mqg/files/osfstorage/63b591840b7198070b7c2d47.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethic Research Board of the University Regensburg (no. 22-3059-101). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

MR and PJ contributed to the study's conception and design, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by MR. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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