The article, authored by Yulin Tang of University College London and Wenzhou-Kean University and Chee-Seng Tan of Wenzhou-Kean University’s Department of Psychology and its Well-Being and Strengths Research Center, takes as its starting point what the authors describe as the uplifting effect on personal life happiness that viewing tragedies can produce, an effect highlighted in earlier research by Knobloch-Westerwick and colleagues. Rather than treating tragedy as merely an aesthetic puzzle, the authors frame it as a window into existential well-being, examining how characters in tragic narratives experience and confront suffering, and what those confrontations reveal about resilience and growth under conditions of hardship.

To ground the analysis in concrete cultural material, the study focuses on two widely known modern tragic novels representing Eastern and Western literary traditions: the Chinese novel To Live and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Both works are canonical in their respective cultures, and both center on protagonists who endure profound loss and hardship without being destroyed by it. By placing these narratives side by side, the authors set out to identify the differences and similarities in how positivity is expressed across cultural contexts, and to trace how religious and philosophical backgrounds shape each story’s vision of a life worth living.

The methodological approach is a cross-cultural contextual analysis, combining close reading of the two novels with concepts drawn from positive psychology, humanistic psychology, and comparative literature. Positive psychology, the scientific field that studies the conditions and processes contributing to human flourishing, has often been criticized for emphasizing positive emotions and individual achievement at the expense of darker existential realities. The authors argue that tragic narratives offer a corrective lens, demonstrating that well-being is not the absence of suffering but can emerge through and alongside it, a perspective that resonates with existential approaches to meaning and with humanistic psychology’s emphasis on the whole person.

In The Old Man and the Sea, the aging fisherman Santiago endures an epic struggle with a giant marlin, only to lose his catch to sharks on the journey home. The narrative’s power, the analysis suggests, lies in the protagonist’s perseverance, dignity, and refusal to concede defeat even when material success is stripped away. Within the framework of positive psychology, such a character embodies constructs like perseverance, hope, and meaning-making, while the story’s philosophical backdrop, shaped by Western individualism and a struggle-oriented view of human worth, frames well-being as something forged through effort and defiance in the face of an indifferent universe.

To Live presents a strikingly different, yet complementary, portrait of endurance. Its protagonist survives war, famine, and the deaths of nearly everyone he loves, yet continues to live with a quiet, almost stoic acceptance. The authors situate this orientation within the religious and philosophical traditions of the Chinese context, where notions of endurance, filial and familial bonds, and a more cyclical or acceptance-oriented view of fate inform what well-being means. Where the Western narrative dramatizes heroic struggle, the Eastern narrative dramatizes persistence and continuity, suggesting that positivity itself is culturally inflected: the same underlying human capacity for flourishing is expressed through different narrative and philosophical vocabularies.

Through this comparative analysis, the article develops a joint, cross-cultural understanding of well-being. The similarities between the two novels point to what may be universal: human beings can sustain hope, meaning, and even happiness amid irreversible loss. The differences point to what is contextual: the sources of that resilience, whether individual striving or communal and philosophical acceptance, are shaped by cultural narratives and inherited worldviews. This dual conclusion carries implications for cross-cultural psychology, which has long documented that constructs such as happiness, self-esteem, and meaning do not translate neatly across societies, and it suggests that literature can serve as a rich data source for studying those variations in vivo.

The authors argue that integrating positive psychology into the interpretation and appreciation of tragic stories yields benefits in both directions. For literary studies, psychological constructs provide a precise vocabulary for describing how characters transform suffering into significance, moving criticism beyond impressionistic claims about catharsis. For psychology, literary narratives supply complex, culturally embedded case material that laboratory measures of well-being often flatten. Literature, in this framing, becomes a lens through which readers can understand and pursue well-being in their own lives, witnessing models of resilience that are emotionally vivid in ways that abstract advice about gratitude or optimism rarely achieves.

The article also points toward practical applications in education. The authors suggest the possibility of utilizing literary works in positive and multicultural education, where students might read tragic narratives from multiple cultural traditions while reflecting on the psychological strengths those stories portray. Such an approach could simultaneously cultivate emotional literacy, empathy, and intercultural understanding, helping learners recognize that there is more than one culturally legitimate path to a meaningful life. In an era when well-being curricula are increasingly common in schools and universities, the proposal positions comparative literature as an underused resource for teaching flourishing, particularly around themes of loss that conventional positive education often sidesteps.

Published open access on 15 September 2026, the perspective article contributes to a growing intersection between psychology and comparative literature, reviving a debate that began with Aristotle and giving it contemporary empirical relevance. Its central claim is quietly radical: tragedy, far from being the enemy of happiness, may be one of humanity’s most durable technologies for cultivating it. By reading Santiago’s struggle and the quiet endurance of To Live’s protagonist as two cultural grammars of resilience, Tang and Tan invite psychologists, literary scholars, and educators alike to reconsider what tragic stories are for, and why, across centuries and continents, people keep returning to them not despite their sorrow, but because of what that sorrow teaches about living well.

Subject of Research: Cross-cultural analysis of positive psychology and existential well-being in tragic literature

Article Title: A cross-cultural contextual analysis of positive psychology and existential well-being in tragic narratives

Article References: Tang, Y., & Tan, C.-S. (2026). A cross-cultural contextual analysis of positive psychology and existential well-being in tragic narratives. Discover Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00782-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00782-9

Keywords: positive psychology, tragedy, well-being, comparative literature, cross-cultural psychology, humanistic psychology, existential well-being, resilience, To Live, The Old Man and the Sea, multicultural education, meaning