Eight Domains of Human Flourishing

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Eight Domains of Human Flourishing is a framework for understanding what humans need to thrive, derived from a simple thought experiment: if you were a zookeeper designing a sanctuary for humans, what would you provide?

Every animal has observable conditions for flourishing. A wolf needs a pack, territory, prey to hunt, and space to roam. Deprive it of any one of these and it deteriorates — even if every other need is met. Humans are no different. We are animals with the same fundamental requirements for physical maintenance, social bonding, purposeful activity, and environmental safety that every complex social species requires.

The difference is that we have built systems that systematically deprive large portions of our species of these conditions — and then blame the individual animal for failing to thrive.

The Thought Experiment

Imagine you are a zookeeper. Not a prison warden. Not a factory farmer. A sanctuary designer — someone whose entire job is to create conditions where an animal flourishes.

You are given charge of a new species: Homo sapiens.

You know this animal is:

  • Highly social, with complex bonding and hierarchy needs
  • Physically active, evolved for varied movement across terrain
  • Tool-using and problem-solving, requiring cognitive challenge
  • Creative, compelled to make and modify its environment
  • Cooperative, with strong drives toward mutual aid and group benefit
  • Meaning-seeking, with observable distress when purpose is absent
  • Playful across its entire lifespan, not only in juvenile stages
  • Habitat-sensitive, with measurable physiological responses to environmental quality

What enclosure do you build? What conditions do you provide?

The answer gives you eight domains — eight categories of need that, taken together, describe the complete set of conditions for human flourishing.

The Eight Domains

# Domain Role Metaphor The Animal Version The Human Version
1 Body The Vehicle Feed, hydrate, move, sleep, groom Nutrition, exercise, sleep, substance management, health maintenance
2 Play & Rest The Cub Chase, tumble, bask in sunlight, do nothing Leisure, joy, purposeless presence, recovery, unstructured time
3 Connection The Herd Member Proximity, grooming, bonding, hierarchy navigation Relationships, community, belonging, intimacy, social identity
4 Creativity The God Modify environment, build nests, cache food in novel ways Making, expressing, building, imagining, bringing new things into existence
5 Service The Slave Protect the pack, feed the young, groom others Contributing, protecting, giving, volunteering, community participation
6 Mastery The Master Refine hunting technique, solve novel foraging problems Learning, challenge, growth, skill development, career progression
7 Meaning The Monk Ritual behaviour, mourning, seasonal awareness Purpose, values, spirituality, identity, philosophical orientation
8 Habitat The Zookeeper Territory, den, resource access, environmental safety Shelter, finances, physical environment, tools, neighbourhood safety

Why These Eight?

The test for whether a domain is genuinely distinct is simple: can a person be flourishing in all other domains but genuinely suffering in this one?

For every one of these eight, the answer is unambiguously yes:

  • A person with a strong body, great relationships, creative output, meaningful work, a sense of purpose, a safe home, and regular play — but no opportunity to serve others — reports emptiness and purposelessness.[1]
  • A person with all of the above but no play or rest — only productive activity — burns out, loses joy, and exhibits stress responses indistinguishable from captive animals exhibiting stereotypic behaviour.[2]
  • A person with all of the above but living in a mouldy flat with financial stress — flourishing habitat denied — shows elevated cortisol, impaired immune function, and degraded mental health regardless of how well the other seven domains are maintained.[3]

The domains are not a hierarchy. They are concurrent requirements. Like the environmental conditions in an animal enclosure, they must all be present simultaneously for the animal to thrive.

The Animal Evidence

Captivity Research

The science of animal welfare provides the clearest evidence for why these domains matter. Decades of zoo science, veterinary behavioural medicine, and conservation biology have established that animals in captivity require specific environmental conditions to avoid physiological and psychological deterioration.

The Five Domains Model of animal welfare, developed by Professor David Mellor at Massey University, is the current gold standard for assessing animal wellbeing.[4] It identifies:

Mellor's Five Domains Description Human Parallel
1. Nutrition Adequate food and water access Body (Domain 1)
2. Environment Comfortable physical surroundings Habitat (Domain 8)
3. Health Absence of disease, injury, functional impairment Body (Domain 1)
4. Behavioural Interactions Ability to express natural behaviours, social contact Connection, Creativity, Mastery, Play, Service (Domains 2-7)
5. Mental State Overall affective experience — pleasure, comfort, interest Emergent outcome of all eight domains

The critical insight is that Mellor's Domain 4 — "Behavioural Interactions" — is massively compressed for animals compared to humans. A wolf needs to hunt, bond, and play. A human needs to hunt (mastery), bond (connection), play (play), create (creativity), serve (service), and find meaning (meaning). The human version of "behavioural interactions" unpacks into six distinct domains because human behavioural complexity demands it.

What Deprivation Looks Like

When any domain is absent, animals exhibit predictable deterioration patterns. These are identical in structure to human responses:

Deprived Domain Animal Response Human Response Research
Body (inadequate nutrition/movement) Obesity, lethargy, organ failure Obesity, chronic disease, fatigue Zoo nutritional science is directly applicable to human dietary research[5]
Play & Rest (no unstructured time) Stereotypic behaviour: pacing, rocking, self-harm Burnout, anxiety, depression, loss of joy Stereotypic behaviour in captive animals mirrors human responses to chronic overstimulation[6]
Connection (social isolation) Self-mutilation, immune collapse, premature death Depression, immune suppression, 26% increased mortality risk Holt-Lunstad's meta-analysis: social isolation is as lethal as smoking 15 cigarettes daily[7]
Creativity (barren environment, no novelty) Apathy, learned helplessness, cognitive decline Boredom, stagnation, cognitive decline, depression Environmental enrichment research shows cognitive stimulation is neuroprotective across species[8]
Service (no opportunity to contribute to group) Social withdrawal, loss of status, aggression Purposelessness, existential distress, increased mortality Volunteering reduces mortality by 22-44% in older adults[9]
Mastery (no challenge or problem-solving) Cognitive atrophy, behavioural rigidity Boredom, loss of self-efficacy, depression Csikszentmihalyi's flow research: challenge-skill balance is essential for psychological wellbeing[10]
Meaning (removal from natural context/ritual) Disorientation, failure to mate, abnormal social behaviour Existential crisis, nihilism, suicidality Frankl's logotherapy: meaning is a primary human motivation; its absence produces "noögenic neurosis"[11]
Habitat (inadequate enclosure) Chronic stress, immune suppression, aggression, stereotypies Chronic stress, elevated cortisol, impaired immune function, mental illness Housing quality independently predicts physical and mental health outcomes[12]

Environmental Enrichment

The most relevant branch of zoo science is environmental enrichment — the practice of modifying an animal's environment to stimulate natural behaviours and improve welfare. The parallels to human wellbeing design are direct:

  • Feeding enrichment (hiding food, requiring problem-solving to access it) maps to Body + Mastery — nutrition combined with cognitive challenge
  • Social enrichment (appropriate group composition) maps to Connection
  • Sensory enrichment (novel stimuli, textures, scents) maps to Creativity + Play
  • Occupational enrichment (puzzles, tools, tasks) maps to Mastery + Service
  • Spatial enrichment (varied terrain, hiding places, choice of microhabitat) maps to Habitat

The key finding across enrichment research is that no single type of enrichment is sufficient. Animals require enrichment across multiple categories simultaneously — just as humans require all eight domains to be addressed concurrently.[13]

The Human Evidence

Convergence Across Frameworks

The eight domains are not arbitrary. They converge with multiple established models of human wellbeing, each arriving at similar conclusions from different starting points:

Framework Author/Source Domains Identified Convergence with Eight Domains
PERMA Martin Seligman (2011)[14] Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment Play (P), Mastery (E), Connection (R), Meaning (M), Mastery (A)
Hierarchy of Needs Abraham Maslow (1943)[15] Physiological, Safety, Belonging, Esteem, Self-Actualisation Body (Phys), Habitat (Safety), Connection (Belong), Mastery (Esteem), Meaning (Self-Act)
Self-Determination Theory Deci & Ryan (2000)[16] Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness Mastery (Comp), Connection (Rel), distributed across all (Auton)
Five Domains (Animal Welfare) David Mellor (2017) Nutrition, Environment, Health, Behavioural Interactions, Mental State Body, Habitat, Body, Domains 2-7, Emergent outcome
Social Determinants of Health WHO / Marmot (2008)[17] Income, Education, Employment, Housing, Social Connection, Early Childhood, Food Security Habitat, Mastery, Service/Mastery, Habitat, Connection, Body/Connection, Body
Wheel of Life Paul J. Meyer / coaching tradition Health, Career, Finance, Relationships, Fun, Growth, Environment, Spirituality Body, Mastery/Service, Habitat, Connection, Play, Mastery, Habitat, Meaning

The convergence is striking. Whether you start from positive psychology, motivational theory, animal welfare science, public health epidemiology, or life coaching, you arrive at essentially the same set of concurrent requirements. The eight domains are not a new invention — they are a synthesis that names what every framework is pointing at through the clearest possible lens: the animal one.

Domain-Specific Human Evidence

1. Body (The Vehicle)

  • Physical inactivity is responsible for 6-10% of all chronic disease globally, including coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and breast and colon cancers[18]
  • Sleep deprivation (less than 6 hours) increases all-cause mortality by 12%[19]
  • Nutritional quality independently predicts depression risk — the Mediterranean diet reduces depression incidence by 33%[20]

2. Play & Rest (The Cub)

  • Leisure activity participation is associated with lower blood pressure, cortisol, waist circumference, and BMI, and higher positive psychosocial states[21]
  • Play deprivation in mammals produces animals that are socially incompetent, anxious, and aggressive — patterns directly observed in chronically overworked humans[22]
  • Stuart Brown's research at the National Institute for Play found that play history is as important as any other factor in predicting adult mental health outcomes[23]

3. Connection (The Herd Member)

  • Social isolation increases mortality risk by 26% — comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes per day and exceeding obesity as a risk factor[24]
  • Loneliness activates the same neural pathways as physical pain[25]
  • Rat Park experiments demonstrated that environmental and social enrichment virtually eliminates addictive behaviour even when drugs are freely available[26]

4. Creativity (The God)

  • Creative activity engagement is associated with reduced anxiety, depression, and stress across clinical and non-clinical populations[27]
  • Environmental enrichment (including novel object interaction and creative problem-solving) produces measurable neurogenesis — the growth of new brain cells — in the hippocampus across mammalian species[28]

5. Service (The Slave)

  • Volunteering reduces mortality in older adults by 22-44%[29]
  • Prosocial spending (spending money on others rather than oneself) produces greater happiness gains than personal spending — replicated across cultures from Canada to Uganda[30]
  • Helping behaviour activates mesolimbic reward pathways — the same neural circuits involved in food and social bonding, suggesting service is a primary biological drive, not a cultural construction[31]

6. Mastery (The Master)

  • Csikszentmihalyi's flow research demonstrates that the challenge-skill balance is essential for psychological wellbeing — too little challenge produces boredom, too much produces anxiety[32]
  • Self-efficacy — the belief in one's ability to accomplish goals — is one of the strongest predictors of mental health, physical health, and achievement across domains[33]

7. Meaning (The Monk)

  • Having a sense of purpose in life reduces all-cause mortality by 15.9% after adjusting for other factors[34]
  • Viktor Frankl observed in Auschwitz that prisoners who maintained a sense of meaning were measurably more likely to survive identical physical conditions than those who lost it[35]
  • Meaning manifests differently depending on cultural context, individual temperament, and demographic factors — it is not one thing, but a class of experiences that includes spiritual practice, philosophical orientation, value alignment, identity coherence, and connection to something larger than the self

8. Habitat (The Zookeeper)

  • Housing quality independently predicts both physical and mental health outcomes, with housing improvements producing measurable gains in health even when controlling for income[36]
  • Financial stress activates the same chronic stress pathways as physical threats — sustained HPA axis activation, elevated cortisol, immune suppression[37]
  • Access to green space independently reduces cortisol levels, blood pressure, and mental health symptom severity[38]
  • Every animal in a well-designed sanctuary has its enclosure maintained by someone else — the zookeeper. In human terms, this means the habitat domain is partly about personal environment management and partly about the systems that maintain the conditions around you — infrastructure, governance, economic structures. This is what OMXUS builds.

The Roles

Each domain maps to a role that every human needs to regularly inhabit. Not as a permanent identity, but as a recurring mode of being:

Role Mode of Being What It Feels Like What Happens Without It
The Vehicle Maintaining the body "I am physically well" Deterioration, disease, fatigue
The Cub Playing, resting, being present "I am enjoying this for no reason" Burnout, joylessness, stereotypic behaviour
The Herd Member Belonging, bonding, relating "I am known and I know others" Isolation, loneliness, immune collapse
The God Creating, expressing, imagining "I made this. It didn't exist before" Stagnation, apathy, cognitive decline
The Slave Serving, contributing, protecting "I am useful to my community" Purposelessness, existential emptiness
The Master Learning, improving, overcoming "I am getting better at this" Boredom, loss of self-efficacy, atrophy
The Monk Reflecting, orienting, finding meaning "I understand why this matters" Nihilism, disorientation, existential crisis
The Zookeeper Maintaining the environment "My world is safe and functional" Chronic stress, hypervigilance, survival mode

A flourishing human moves between all eight roles regularly. Not equally — some seasons of life emphasise different domains. But chronic absence of any single domain produces observable deterioration, just as it does in any captive animal.

The Sanctuary Test

To assess wellbeing — your own or someone else's — ask the zookeeper's question for each domain:

  1. Body: Is this animal adequately fed, hydrated, rested, and physically active?
  2. Play & Rest: Does this animal have unstructured time for purposeless enjoyment?
  3. Connection: Does this animal have appropriate social contact — bonding, intimacy, group belonging?
  4. Creativity: Does this animal have opportunity to create, modify, or express?
  5. Service: Does this animal have opportunity to contribute to its group?
  6. Mastery: Does this animal face appropriate challenges that develop its capabilities?
  7. Meaning: Does this animal have orientation — a sense of why it does what it does?
  8. Habitat: Is this animal's enclosure safe, comfortable, and adequately resourced?

If the answer to any of these is no, the animal is not flourishing — regardless of how well the other seven are maintained.

That is the definition of wellbeing. It is not complicated. We just forgot we are animals.

Connection to OMXUS

OMXUS is, fundamentally, a sanctuary design project. Every component of the system maps to maintaining one or more of these eight domains at the infrastructure level:

Domain OMXUS Component Mechanism
Body Economic security Eliminates food insecurity, enables health maintenance
Play & Rest Basic income, reduced coerced labour Creates time and space for unstructured living
Connection 60-second response, trust networks Builds connection infrastructure at community scale
Creativity Economic security + free time Removes barriers to creative expression
Service Community governance, participation systems Creates meaningful pathways to contribution
Mastery Work by choice, education access Enables challenge-seeking rather than survival labour
Meaning Prevention-first design, community purpose Connects individual action to collective wellbeing
Habitat Housing security, community safety Maintains the enclosure at system level

The insight is that most humans are not failing to flourish because of individual deficiency. They are failing to flourish because the enclosure is badly designed.

A good zookeeper does not blame the animal. A good zookeeper fixes the enclosure.

See Also

References

  1. ↑ Musick, M. A., & Wilson, J. (2003). Volunteering and depression: the role of psychological and social resources in different age groups. Social Science & Medicine, 56(2), 259-269.
  2. ↑ Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. 3rd ed. New York: Holt Paperbacks.
  3. ↑ Evans, G. W. (2003). The built environment and mental health. Journal of Urban Health, 80(4), 536-555.
  4. ↑ Mellor, D. J. (2017). Operational details of the Five Domains Model and its key applications to the assessment and management of animal welfare. Animals, 7(8), 60.
  5. ↑ Hosey, G., Melfi, V., & Pankhurst, S. (2013). Zoo Animals: Behaviour, Management, and Welfare. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press.
  6. ↑ Mason, G. J. (1991). Stereotypies: a critical review. Animal Behaviour, 41(6), 1015-1037.
  7. ↑ Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.
  8. ↑ van Praag, H., Kempermann, G., & Gage, F. H. (2000). Neural consequences of environmental enrichment. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1(3), 191-198.
  9. ↑ Okun, M. A., Yeung, E. W., & Brown, S. (2013). Volunteering by older adults and risk of mortality: a meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, 28(2), 564-577.
  10. ↑ Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.
  11. ↑ Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
  12. ↑ Thomson, H., Thomas, S., Sellstrom, E., & Petticrew, M. (2013). Housing improvements for health and associated socio-economic outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (2).
  13. ↑ Shepherdson, D. J., Mellen, J. D., & Hutchins, M. (1998). Second Nature: Environmental Enrichment for Captive Animals. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
  14. ↑ Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. New York: Free Press.
  15. ↑ Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
  16. ↑ Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.
  17. ↑ World Health Organization. (2008). Closing the Gap in a Generation. WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health.
  18. ↑ Lee, I. M., et al. (2012). Effect of physical inactivity on major non-communicable diseases worldwide: an analysis of burden of disease and life expectancy. The Lancet, 380(9838), 219-229.
  19. ↑ Cappuccio, F. P., et al. (2010). Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep, 33(5), 585-592.
  20. ↑ Lassale, C., et al. (2019). Healthy dietary indices and risk of depressive outcomes. Molecular Psychiatry, 24(7), 965-986.
  21. ↑ Pressman, S. D., et al. (2009). Association of enjoyable leisure activities with psychological and physical well-being. Psychosomatic Medicine, 71(7), 725-732.
  22. ↑ Pellis, S. M., & Pellis, V. C. (2009). The Playful Brain: Venturing to the Limits of Neuroscience. London: Oneworld Publications.
  23. ↑ Brown, S. (2009). Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. New York: Avery.
  24. ↑ Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.
  25. ↑ Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.
  26. ↑ Alexander, B. K., Beyerstein, B. L., Hadaway, P. F., & Coambs, R. B. (1981). Effect of early and later colony housing on oral ingestion of morphine in rats. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 15(4), 571-576.
  27. ↑ Stuckey, H. L., & Nobel, J. (2010). The connection between art, healing, and public health: a review of current literature. American Journal of Public Health, 100(2), 254-263.
  28. ↑ van Praag, H., Kempermann, G., & Gage, F. H. (2000). Neural consequences of environmental enrichment. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1(3), 191-198.
  29. ↑ Okun, M. A., Yeung, E. W., & Brown, S. (2013). Volunteering by older adults and risk of mortality: a meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, 28(2), 564-577.
  30. ↑ Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687-1688.
  31. ↑ Moll, J., et al. (2006). Human fronto-mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(42), 15623-15628.
  32. ↑ Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.
  33. ↑ Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: W. H. Freeman.
  34. ↑ Cohen, R., Bavishi, C., & Rozanski, A. (2016). Purpose in life and its relationship to all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events: a meta-analysis. Psychosomatic Medicine, 78(2), 122-133.
  35. ↑ Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
  36. ↑ Thomson, H., Thomas, S., Sellstrom, E., & Petticrew, M. (2013). Housing improvements for health and associated socio-economic outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (2).
  37. ↑ Sweet, E., Nandi, A., Adam, E. K., & McDade, T. W. (2013). The high price of debt: household financial debt and its impact on mental and physical health. Social Science & Medicine, 91, 94-100.
  38. ↑ Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., & Daily, G. C. (2012). The impacts of nature experience on human cognitive function and mental health. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1249(1), 118-136.
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