Researchers from an international team involving Poles have found that people living according to their moral compass rate their physical and mental health better and are at lower risk of developing depression. The results of the interdisciplinary study were published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

The research on the role of moral behaviour in shaping health and well-being was led by Dr Dorota Węziak-Białowolska, a statistician, economist, and health sociologist, who began her work on the subject as an employee of Harvard University and is currently continuing it at the Centre for Evaluation and Analysis of Public Policies at Jagiellonian University. She also involved researchers from Harvard University and the VIA Institute on Character Strengths. The research combined elements of psychological, sociological, and epidemiological studies.

As Prof Węziak-Białowolska explains, research on the health consequences of engaging in morally right behaviour has been conducted for years. However, they were often small, experimental studies focusing mainly on the incidence of depression. Studies using observational data have also been carried out, but although they were done on larger samples, they mainly used cross-sectional survey data. In contrast, in terms of disease risk assessment, these studies used only self-reported information, which is fraught with inaccuracies in reporting.

The approach of the Krakow research team was different. They were able to combine survey data on character traits (including strong character traits) with disease data obtained from the medical records of the surveyed people, which is unique and rarely possible. In this way, she gained insights into the real morbidity of the respondents, determined by medical diagnosis.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński