Centeredness Research Study

We conducted two studies, approximately one year apart, to explore the impact of various childhood experiences on future adult well-being. Well-being, in our study, was defined by the absence of typical issues such as anxiety, depression, aggression and by scoring high on life satisfaction. We repeated the study, one year later, to confirm the results since sometimes initial findings don't hold up on repeated tests. Despite our concerns that the emotions surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic might impact the repeatability of our second study, the results were consistent.

Explore Research Data

We have released several papers on these findings ^[1]^[2], but our leading study is called “Childhood Centeredness is a Broader Predictor of Young Adulthood Mental Health than Childhood Adversity, Attachment, and Other Positive Childhood Experiences“ ‍ As the title suggests, our new concept of "Centeredness" was found to be a more comprehensive predictor of future mental health across both studies.

Below is some data from the original study that shows how the data compared across these measures. The charts show the adjusted R2 absolute values. R2, in an oversimplified explanation, is a way to use statistics to estimate how well an input helps predict an output. For example, heat would have a high R2 for melting ice-cream, but the hair color of the person eating the ice-cream would have a low R2.

Notes for Academics: We use absolute adjusted R2 because some of these are positively impacting well-being (Centeredness, Benevolent Experiences) while others, like Adverse Childhood Experiences, have a negative impact. Also, ECR-RS is scored separately as instructed by the scale creators.

First, let’s look at how each traditional measure compared in our first study of 550 people. In all four predictions, notice that Centeredness has the highest scores.

In the second study (1 year later) of 1200 people during Covid, it showed similar results. Centeredness has the highest values for all four outcomes.

We encourage further research on the free Centeredness Scales (adult version, adolescent version) as well as distribution of our free resources that teach about how to apply Centeredness (see our home page)