Royal Holloway, University of London
Research into the efficacy of Stoic ideas and practices is still in its early days. The first attempt to gather data, so far as we are aware, was via the Stoic Week experiment that began in 2012, run by Modern Stoicism. The Director of Research for Modern Stoicism, Tim LeBon, is a member of the Centre. At present, Centre members are running research projects generating further and more robust results into the efficacy of Stoic ideas and practices, the results of which will be published in due course.
Most importantly, Centre members have recently published research validating the 'Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale', developed over many years via Stoic Week. This 40-item scale represents a breakthrough for psychology and philosophy research. Unlike previous measures that captured colloquial 'stoicism' (emotional suppression), our scale measures authentic Stoic philosophy - focusing on wisdom, virtue, and flourishing.
LeBon, T., Brown, G., DiGiuseppe, R. et al. The Development and Validation of the Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale. Cognitive Therapy and Research (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-025-10635-9
Below we list published academic research that has just started to appear in recent years:
MacLellan, A., Derakshan, N., ‘The Effects of Stoic Training and Adaptive Working Memory Training on Emotional Vulnerability in High Worriers’, Cognitive Therapy and Research 45 (2021), 730–744, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10183-4
Brown, M. E. L., MacLellan, A., Laughey, W. et al., ‘Can Stoic Training Develop Medical Student Empathy and Resilience? A Mixed-Methods Study’, BMC Medical Education 22 (2022), 340, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03391-x
Karl, J. A., Verhaeghen, P., Aikman, S. N. et al., ‘Misunderstood Stoicism: The Negative Association between Stoic Ideology and well-Being’, Journal of Happiness Studies 23 (2022), 3531–3547, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00563-w
MacLellan, A., Brown, M. E. L., LeBon, T., Guha, N., ‘The Application of Stoicism to Health Professions Education’, in Brown, M. E. L., Veen, M., Finn, G. M. (eds), Applied Philosophy for Health Professions Education (Singapore: Springer, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1512-3_22
Menzies, R. E., Whittle, L. F., ‘Stoicism and Death Acceptance: Integrating Stoic Philosophy in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Death Anxiety’, Discover Psychology 2, 11 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-022-00023-9
Connery, A., Cavanna, A. E. Coleman, R., ‘Can Stoicism inspire stuttering intervention? The clinical usefulness of an ancient philosophy’, International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 58 (2023), 977–987,https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12832
Moreno-Monsalve, N., Delgado-Ortiz, M., Sanabria-Ospino, A., Pardo Ezcurra, T. T., Nicolás Rojas, Y. W., Fajardo-Moreno, W., ‘High-Performance Project Teams: Analysis from the Stoic Approach’, Sustainability 15, 16095 (2023), https://doi.org/10.3390/su152216095
Hammer, K., Van Gordon, W., ‘Joyful Stoic Death Writing: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Newcomers Contemplating Death in an Online Group’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology (2023), https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678231178051
Garcia, M. V. F., ‘What Every Intensivist Should Know about Stoicism to Prevent Burnout’, Journal of Critical Care 80 (2024), 154454, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrc.2023.154454