![]() “Self transcendence is the most popular way that people try to have meaningful lives - by helping or contributing to others,” said Prof. He added that when coupled with self transcendence, the search of meaning can also make people more generous and forgiving as they have “less need to respond to anxiety with defenses that are hostile or self-serving.” He noted that focusing away from material reality and on guiding values can activate a “basic dopaminergic motivational system that automatically mutes anxiety and related phenomena.” ![]() Ian McGregor, professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, and first author of the study, told MNT that focusing on non-materialistic guiding values makes us more resilient to frustrations and failures in life. In the end, they found that people who are persistently engaged in the pursuit of deriving meaning, and focus on selfless, self-transcendent values, tend to have more feelings of personal power in stressful situations and make less harsh judgments. The researchers recorded participants’ brain activity via EEG, and used questionnaires to assess various aspects of their personality. They then asked participants to describe how their life goals reflected their highest values. In a recent study from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers reminded people of stressful topics previously shown to make participants upset and defensively hostile. By comparison, looking for the beauty in everyday life can help you experience a successful search for meaning,” she told us.Įvidence shows that self-transcendent values - going beyond meeting one’s own wants and needs in pursuit of higher goals - may also contribute to a successful search for meaning. For example, someone may search for a cosmic or ultimate meaning and end up feeling disappointed. ![]() “I think searching but feeling like you didn’t come up with a satisfying answer can actually backfire. Rebecca Schlegel, professor of social and personality psychology at Texas A&M University, also an author on this study, cautioned that while a “successful” meaning search may be beneficial, an unsuccessful search for meaning may be counterproductive. I assume experiential appreciation varies across the lifespan and is perhaps even more important as we age as it helps life seem worthwhile even if long-term goals seem less attainable- perhaps generating a loss of purpose- and memory gets more fragmented, leading to a loss of coherence,” he added. “As we age, a sense of mattering may become more important to individuals, perhaps to placate fears of one’s mortality alongside other age-related concerns. Therefore, it might be especially important for one to reestablish coherence during these times.” This, in turn, can disrupt our sense of coherence. bad things are not supposed to happen to good people. “For example, trauma has the potential to lower meaning in life as the experience is often inconsistent with our worldviews, e.g. That said, it is likely that different factors are more important in different situations across the lifespan.” ![]() Joshua Hicks, professor of social and personality psychology at Texas A&M University, one of the authors of the study cited above, told Medical News Today: “My guess is that an optimal sense of meaning is derived from high levels of each of the facets. When asked whether any of these four facets are more beneficial than others for psychological well-being, Prof. feeling like we matter, from an existential point of view.Ī recent study published in Nature Human Behaviouralso suggests a fourth source of deriving meaning in life - experiential appreciation, or appreciating the small things in life, such as a simple coffee or the beauty of a sunset.possession of clear, long-term goals and a sense of purpose.coherence, or feeling like life “makes sense”.Existential psychology seeks to study “life’s big questions,” and generally defines three main sources of finding subjective meaning: ![]()
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