The psychology behind the well-being benefits of libraries

Daphna Blatt says she turned to the 2011 book “Flourish” by Martin Seligman, director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, for personal guidance but it “ended up leading to a professional epiphany.” Blatt, who serves as director of strategy and public impact for the New York Public Library (NYPL), says she wondered, How could this framework for flourishing apply to libraries?

She reached out to Seligman, who passed the request on to James Pawelski, principal investigator and founding director of the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project (HHF) at the Positive Psychology Center. Pawelski looped in his associate director of research, Katherine Cotter. What resulted is a white paper illuminating the positive impact of libraries on individual and collective well-being.

The white paper is based on a 2023 survey of NYPL patrons, and free-text responses in the survey illustrate library well-being benefits: “The library provides a sense of security.” “This place gives me some balance from the hectic schedule of work, just to have a peaceful place to recalibrate and let go.” “It offers us hope that we can do something, that we can make a change, that we can advance.” “NYPL makes me feel connected to fellow New Yorkers and to my sense of home here.”

“You walk into a library and find a calm, stable, quiet presence, and patrons reported having an appreciation for that,” Pawelski says. “They also reported having their positive emotions bolstered and that the library is a place of engagement and flow and concentration. They even reported having a sense of stronger relationships.”

The survey and report were based on Seligman’s PERMA model, which posits five elements of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.

The survey found that NYPL spaces and resources create a foundation for well-being by providing feelings such as safety, refuge, and focus; activating all five PERMA elements, especially engagement; and providing an impact beyond well-being by promoting growth and expansion.

“My team and I are believers in, and advocates for, what I call ‘library magic,’ the unique benefit that libraries bring to the communities they serve,” Blatt says. “Part of our mission is to pinpoint and articulate the specific mechanisms underlying that magic. This research illuminates one of these mechanisms, demonstrating the integral role public libraries play in fostering experiences of well-being, particularly for those living in lower income ZIP codes.”

In the survey, 73% of respondents in lower-income ZIP codes reported that their library use positively affects their feeling “that there are people in their lives who really care about them,” compared to 48% in higher-income areas. The survey also found that that the positive impact of libraries was higher for those who spent time at a branch rather than just going online, though 58% of e-only users reported that library use affects how optimistic they are about the future.

“I think it is a really interesting kind of commentary on the support system that libraries provide as a free, accessible-to-everybody resource, where not many of those exist,” Cotter says, adding that unlike other social programs serving low-income people, there is no stigma attached to libraries. Pawelski says, “I think a nice thing about libraries is they don’t ask anything of us.”

When positive psychology emerged as a field, Seligman and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote about positive subjective experience, positive traits, and positive institutions, Pawelski says. But the third domain has not been as well-studied as the others, and so he was excited to dive into public libraries.

The New York Public Library fielded online and paper versions of a survey in six languages in November and December 2023; they analyzed responses from 1,974 patrons. Blatt and Em Maloney, patron impact and satisfaction researcher at the library, took the lead on the report, which Pawelski and Cotter co-wrote.

“We’re so grateful for this partnership with HHF. James and Katherine’ expertise in the positive humanities, and especially their work on and within art museums, helped us position and articulate how our research fits inside the larger paradigm of academic work on psychological well-being,” Maloney says. The team “quickly realized there was much more to study at this intersection,” leading the library and Penn to collaborate on a joint proposal for a grant to conduct a national study about libraries’ impact on well-being.

Asked where he sees the partnership with the New York Public Library going from here, Pawelski drummed on his desk in excitement. He is interested in building on this work by expanding the sample size, doing causal research, and assessing not only positive emotions but also the alleviation of negative ones.

“I think something else we’re really interested in is also applying some of our conceptual work that gets at the mechanisms for why this engagement produces flourishing,” Cotter says. She is also interested in studying the role that libraries play in different types of communities, such as rural areas that are quieter and have fewer transportation options than New York City.

“I think libraries don’t get the headlines they deserve,” Pawelski says. “They’re unsung bastions of goodness in our world.