Byron Johnson, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences | Founding Director, Institute for Global Human Flourishing Baylor University
- Waco TX
Leading authority on the scientific study of religion and how it impacts key behaviors like volunteerism, generosity, and purpose
Media
Biography
Johnson’s work examines the ways in which religion impacts key behaviors like volunteerism, generosity, and purpose. These topics are covered in four books, The Angola Prison Seminary (2016), which evaluates the influence of a Bible College and inmate-led congregations on prisoners serving life sentences; The Quest for Purpose: The Collegiate Search for a Meaningful Life (2017), which examines the link between religion and finding purpose and meaning, and the subsequent link to academic integrity; The Restorative Prison: Essays on Inmate Peer Ministry and Prosocial Corrections (2021), which looks at the empirical evidence in support of the link between religion and the emerging subfield of positive criminology; and Objective Religion Volume 1,2, 3 (2023, 2024, 2025), which examine factors related to the importance and resilience of religion. A Compendium of Global Flourishing Study Translations (2025), provides details on the elaborate process of translating the questionnaire from the Global Flourishing Study into approximately 40 different languages. His new book The Faith Factor and Social Welfare: Rethinking Evidence, Practice, and Polity (2026), examines evidence for the important role of religion and faith-based organizations in addressing social problems including drug/alcohol addiction, crime and delinquency, homelessness, offender rehabilitation, prison reform, and prisoner reentry. His new book The Death of Religion?: Nones, Others, and the Global Renaissance of Faith (2026), provides an empirical as well as historical argument countering the claim that religion is in decline.
He is the project co-director (with Tyler J. VanderWeele) of the Global Flourishing Study (GFS) a five-year longitudinal data collection and research collaboration between researchers at Baylor University and Harvard University, in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science (COS). This initiative includes data collection for approximately 200,000 participants from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries.
Areas of Expertise
Accomplishments
Newsmaker of the Year
Baylor University
2024-2025
Education
Florida State University
Ph.D.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
M.S.
Middle Tennessee State University
M.A.
Minot State University
B.A.
Media Appearances
Happiness and wealth aren't enough—here's why you should strive to 'flourish'
National Geographic online
2025-04-30
In the years since that initial insight, VanderWeele, now a Harvard professor, has worked closed with Baylor University’s Byron R. Johnson, to create a scientifically calibrated measure of flourishing in order to study it more deeply. Five years ago, in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science, they embarked on an ambitious five-year study of over 200,000 participants from 22 countries to find out what causes a person to flourish.
How to flourish –– even when you aren’t at your happiest, according to research
CNN online
2025-04-30
The research was designed to capture a look at much of the world, said study lead and report contributor Dr. Byron Johnson, distinguished professor of the social sciences at Baylor in Waco, Texas.
Measuring the Good Life
Christianity Today online
2025-04-30
To better understand how flourishing is distributed globally and the key pathways of how individuals and communities attain it, we (alongside our funders and colleagues) launched the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), a groundbreaking five-year longitudinal study of over 200,000 adults across 22 countries, representing well over 40% of the world’s population.
New ‘human flourishing’ survey links frequent religious practice to life satisfaction
NOLA online
2024-04-28
“We’re not shocked at that because there’s a lot of other research that indicates that faith is important to human flourishing, but it may come as a surprise to people that religion would be an important thing,” said Byron R. Johnson, director of Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion.
Offender-led religious movements: Why we should have faith in prisoner-led reform
Open Access Govenment online
2024-01-16
Byron R. Johnson and Sung Joon Jang, both from Baylor University and Pepperdine University, suggest that the solution to criminal justice reform could lie in the prisoner-led faith programmes, which provide positive, cost-efficient rehabilitation
Articles
Demographic variation in weekly alcohol use across countries in the Global Flourishing Study
Communications Medicine2026
Background
Alcohol is the most widely consumed psychoactive substance globally, with significant cultural acceptance. While extensive research has examined its relationship with well-being, cross-country comparisons are essential to understanding demographic variations in drinking patterns—particularly given the lack of post-pandemic data across diverse national contexts. This study aims to describe cross-national demographic variations in alcohol use among countries participating in the Global Flourishing Study (GFS).
Demographic variation in symptoms of depression and anxiety across 22 Global Flourishing Study countries
Communications Medicine2026
Background
We know relatively little about how mental health varies across countries around the world or among demographic groups in diverse nations and cultures.
Methods
The current study addresses these issues by analyzing symptoms of depression and anxiety using data from the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), an international, nationally-representative survey of 202,898 individuals from 22 geographically, economically, and culturally diverse countries collected in 2022-2023.
Strangers, Friends, and Everything Between: Sociodemographic Variation in Social Relationship Quality Across 22 Countries
Social Indicators Research2026
While prior research has demonstrated that social relationships meaningfully shape health and well-being, less is known about how subjective evaluations of the quality of one’s relationships differ across national contexts and across sociodemographic groups within different countries. Using data from the Global Flourishing Study, a large international sample of 202,898 adults from 22 countries, we examined the average level and distributions of social relationship quality by sociodemographic characteristics across and within these countries.
Where hope thrives: demographic variation in hope across 22 countries
Journal of Happiness Studies2026
This cross-national study explores self-rated hope across diverse national and demographic contexts, aiming to bridge the gap in understanding its variability and influence on human flourishing. Utilizing the Global Flourishing Study dataset from 22 countries (N= 202,898) and employing random effects meta-analysis, we explore the cross-national variations in self-rated hope across various sociodemographic factors, including age, gender, marital status, employment, religious service attendance, education, and immigration status.
Sociodemographic variation and childhood predictors of showing love and care for others in 22 countries
Scientific Reports2025
Showing love and care for other people is a vital aspect of human relationships. However, little is known about how levels of love/care expression differ across cultures and across sociodemographic groups within those different cultures, or about the potential childhood antecedents that are associated with love/care expression in adulthood. Based on nationally-representative data from 22 countries in six continents in the Global Flourishing Study (N = 202,898), we present ordered means of love/care expression across countries, observe its distributions across key sociodemographic characteristics, and evaluate the strength of its childhood predictors (with E-values as a robustness check), revealing the extent to which the distributions and associations are uniform throughout the world or differ by country.
