The initial aim behind Stoic Week was to test to see if ancient Stoic life guidance could help people in their daily lives. The evidence that we have gathered so far (including evidence from our longer Mindfulness and Resilience course) suggests that it does, with participants consistently reporting a reduction in negative emotions and an increase in life satisfaction, all after just one week.

Over the 2017 and 2018 iterations of Stoic Week c. 1,500 participants completed a questionnaire (a 25% completion rate) and reported an average 14% reduction in negative emotions, an average 10% increase in positive emotions and an average 13% increase in life satisfaction after a single week of following the programme. These results were correlated with a 10% increase in Stoic attitudes.

The findings from Stoic Week have been confirmed by a longer, four-week online course, Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training (SMRT). The latest iteration in May 2020, attracting 5,017 participants, found a 12% increase in resilience, a 13% increase in flourishing, and a 15% increase in life satisfaction.

One of the things we have done is develop a ‘Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale’ (SABS), in order to measure ‘how Stoic’ people are. The questionnaire is available here and can be freely borrowed.

Other research highlighting the effectiveness of Stoicism is now starting to be published:

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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

Further details and results from Stoic Week can be found in the reports below.

See our Director of Research, Tim LeBon, outline the results

Reports