Dra. Vicki Cabrera

PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology and Evaluation

Victoria (Vicki) Cabrera, PhD (she/her) is the Principal Well-being and Social Impact Consultant, Evaluator, and Researcher at Vicki Cabrera Consulting and a Research and Evaluation Consultant at the Claremont Evaluation Center. She is an expert in well-being science, organizational psychology, positive psychology, and program evaluation and design. Her work focuses on helping organizations in the U.S., the Philippines, and around the world use psychology, research, and evaluation to improve and measure well-being, effectiveness and social impact.

Born and raised in the U.S., Vicki embarked on a life-changing and career-shifting balikbayan journey to the Philippines from 2012 through 2018 where she discovered the spirit of kapwa and bayanihan and found her calling. While there, she worked for an NGO focused on poverty alleviation, co-founded a school for social entrepreneurship in Bulacan, and co-founded a consulting firm in Manila that helped organizations use positive organizational psychology to bring out the best in their employees. This experience inspired her to pursue her PhD and her current work.

Vicki holds a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology with a co-concentration in Evaluation & Applied Research Methods from Claremont Graduate University and an MPA in Public & Nonprofit Management & Policy from New York University. She is also President of the International Positive Psychology Association's Work & Organizations Division and received their 2021 Exemplary Research to Practice Award.

Dissertation

PERMA+4 Building Blocks of Well-Being: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Mechanisms & Conditions that Enable the Subjective Well-Being of Workers

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the challenges many workers face regarding their well-being. Workers continue to report high levels of work-related stress and burnout and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the importance of this issue as declines in well-being were observed on a global scale. In 2022, this issue was brought to the forefront of public awareness when the U.S. Surgeon General raised the well-being and mental health of workers as an urgent public health priority. The critical need to better support worker well-being is further supported by research that shows improving well-being leads to better work performance.

PERMA+4 is a framework, based on positive psychology, that describes the “building blocks of well-being,” nine important areas of your life that have a positive impact on your psychological well-being. These building blocks are: 1) experiencing positive emotions, 2) spending time fully absorbed and engaged in challenging tasks, 3) having positive relationships, 4) having a sense of meaning and purpose, 5) experiencing accomplishment, 6) being in good physical health, 7) having a positive mindset, 8) having a physical environment with access to natural light, nature, and safety, and 9) feeling a sense of financial security. The good news is that research has shown that each of these areas can be intentionally developed to better care for and improve well-being.

The aim of my dissertation was to answer the following research questions:

Which PERMA+4 building blocks contribute the most to the well-being of workers?
How are the PERMA+4 building blocks related to one another?
Are there specific conditions at work that help enhance the positive effect of the PERMA+4 building blocks on well-being?
Are the PERMA+4 building blocks predictive of improved well-being for workers over time?

I conducted two studies in which I defined well-being as having life and job satisfaction. First, I conducted a qualitative study (Study 1) in which I interviewed 24 full-time U.S. workers about their perspectives and experiences with the PERMA+4 building blocks of well-being and how they relate to their life and job satisfaction.

Study 1 findings:

Workers felt the following most important for life satisfaction: positive emotions, physical health, and financial security.
Workers felt the following were most important for job satisfaction: engagement, meaning/purpose, and accomplishment.
Workers felt having positive relationships, meaning/purpose, accomplishment, financial security, and a supportive work environment create positive emotions.
Workers felt engagement, positive relationships, and physical health helped them experience accomplishment.
Having work-life balance was viewed as an important condition for PERMA+4 to improve life satisfaction and job satisfaction.
Having a supportive supervisor was viewed as an important work condition for PERMA+4 to improve job satisfaction.

Based on the findings from this first study, I conducted a follow-up study (Study 2) in which I surveyed 406 workers online, giving them the same survey that measured their PERMA+4 building blocks and well-being twice (two weeks apart) to test the findings from Study 1 quantitatively.

Study 2 findings:

Having all of the PERMA+4 building blocks predicted higher life satisfaction and job satisfaction two weeks later.
Having positive emotions and meaning/purpose predicted higher job satisfaction, having positive emotions predicted higher life satisfaction among women, and having positive relationships predicted more positive emotions two weeks later.
Having work-life balance and a supportive supervisor were not found to be conditions that enhanced the positive effect the PERMA+4 building blocks have on well-being.

Implications of this research:

Implications for researchers:
- The findings of this research contribute to a better understanding of how the PERMA+4 building blocks improve well-being.
- Future research can further investigate these findings with more longitudinal and experimental research methods using additional samples across industries and cultures.
Implications for workers and organizations:
- The findings from this research have important practical implications that address the challenges workers face regarding their well-being.
- Organizations and workers can use these findings to design more targeted workplace practices and positive psychology interventions that better support and improve worker well-being.

Read the Abstract

This dissertation explores the significance of geography and regionalism in shaping the Filipino American experience, a topic often overlooked in scholarly discourse. By focusing on Filipino American undergraduate students in In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the challenges many workers face regarding their well-being. Workers continue to report high levels of work-related stress and burnout and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the importance of this issue as declines in well-being were observed on a global scale. In 2022, the issue of worker well-being was brought to the forefront of public awareness when the U.S. Surgeon General raised the well-being and mental health of workers as an urgent public health priority. The critical need to better support worker well-being is further supported by research that shows improving well-being leads to better work performance.

Research has also demonstrated that worker well-being can be improved using positive psychology interventions. The PERMA+4 building blocks of well-being (positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, accomplishment, physical health, mindset, environment, and economic security) are nine antecedents of well-being that provide a useful framework for designing workplace practices and interventions to better support and improve worker well-being. This dissertation aims to build on previous research on PERMA and PERMA+4 as cross-sectional predictors of subjective well-being (SWB) and contribute to a better understanding of how the PERMA+4 building blocks affects the life satisfaction and job satisfaction of full-time workers. Using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, I investigated: (1) which PERMA+4 building blocks contribute the most to SWB, (2) the relationships among the PERMA+4 building blocks, (3) if there are work conditions that better enable PERMA+4 to improve SWB, and (4) whether PERMA+4 is predictive of SWB across a two-week period.

Study 1 used a qualitative phenomenological approach that consisted of semi-structured interviews with 24 full-time workers. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes that provided insights into how full-time workers perceived and experienced the PERMA+4 building blocks at work and in their lives and how they related to their life satisfaction and job satisfaction. The building blocks that were most frequently cited as most important for life satisfaction were positive emotions, physical health, and economic security. The building blocks that were most frequently cited as most important for job satisfaction were engagement, meaning, and accomplishment. Workers also talked about specific relationships among the building blocks. Positive emotions were viewed as an outcome of positive relationships, meaning, accomplishment, economic security, and environment. Accomplishment was also viewed as an outcome of engagement, positive relationships, and physical health. Finally, having work-life balance was viewed as an enabling condition for PERMA+4 to improve both life satisfaction and job satisfaction, and having a supportive supervisor was viewed as an enabling work condition for PERMA+4 to enhance job satisfaction. These findings were then tested quantitatively as hypotheses in Study 2.

Study 2 used a two-wave panel design with a two-week lag and a sample of full-time workers who completed self-report surveys via Prolific (N = 406). A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a nine-factor structure for PERMA+4 and measurement invariance testing confirmed that this structure was stable across time, gender, and race/ethnicity. Although not all hypotheses were supported, cross-lagged panel modeling (path analysis) results demonstrated that PERMA+4 significantly predicted life satisfaction and job satisfaction two weeks later. Among the individual building blocks, positive emotions and meaning were significant predictors of job satisfaction and positive emotions were a significant predictor of life satisfaction among women. Positive relationships were also found to be a significant predictor of positive emotions, but work-life balance and perceived supervisor support did not moderate the positive relationship between overall PERMA+4 and life satisfaction or job satisfaction.

Overall, the findings of this research contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how PERMA+4 improves well-being. Study 1 findings provide rich qualitative insights into how workers perceive and experience the PERMA+4 building blocks in relation to their well-being. Study 2 went beyond a cross-sectional research design to minimize common method bias and provide evidence of directional relationships between PERMA+4 and SWB, the building blocks that contribute most to SWB, and relationships among the building blocks. Future research can further investigate these qualitative and correlational findings with more longitudinal and experimental research methods using additional samples across industries and cultures. The results of this research also have important practical implications that address the challenges workers face when it comes to their well-being. Organizations and workers can use these findings to inform the design of more targeted workplace practices and positive psychology interventions that better support and improve worker well-being.

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