purpose of life research paper

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Life Crafting as a Way to Find Purpose and Meaning in Life

Affiliation.

1 Department of Technology and Operations Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
PMID: 31920827
PMCID: PMC6923189
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02778

Having a purpose in life is one of the most fundamental human needs. However, for most people, finding their purpose in life is not obvious. Modern life has a way of distracting people from their true goals and many people find it hard to define their purpose in life. Especially at younger ages, people are searching for meaning in life, but this has been found to be unrelated to actually finding meaning. Oftentimes, people experience pressure to have a "perfect" life and show the world how well they are doing, instead of following up on their deep-felt values and passions. Consequently, people may need a more structured way of finding meaning, e.g., via an intervention. In this paper, we discuss evidence-based ways of finding purpose, via a process that we call "life crafting." This process fits within positive psychology and the salutogenesis framework - an approach focusing on factors that support human health and well-being, instead of factors that cause disease. This process ideally starts with an intervention that entails a combination of reflecting on one's values, passions and goals, best possible self, goal attainment plans, and other positive psychology intervention techniques. Important elements of such an intervention are: (1) discovering values and passion, (2) reflecting on current and desired competencies and habits, (3) reflecting on present and future social life, (4) reflecting on a possible future career, (5) writing about the ideal future, (6) writing down specific goal attainment and "if-then" plans, and (7) making public commitments to the goals set. Prior research has shown that personal goal setting and goal attainment plans help people gain a direction or a sense of purpose in life. Research findings from the field of positive psychology, such as salutogenesis, implementation intentions, value congruence, broaden-and-build, and goal-setting literature, can help in building a comprehensive evidence-based life-crafting intervention. This intervention can aid individuals to find a purpose in life, while at the same time ensuring that they make concrete plans to work toward this purpose. The idea is that life crafting enables individuals to take control of their life in order to optimize performance and happiness.

Keywords: Ikigai; goal setting; life crafting; meaning in life; positive psychology; scalable life-crafting intervention; self-concordance; well-being and happiness.

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Purpose in Life: A Reconceptualization for Very Late Life

Research Paper
Published: 14 February 2022
Volume 23 , pages 2337–2348, ( 2022 )

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Keith A. Anderson 1 ,
Noelle L. Fields 1 ,
Jessica Cassidy 1 &
Lisa Peters-Beumer 2

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Purpose in life has been defined as having goals, aims, objectives, and a sense of directedness that give meaning to one’s life and existence. Scales that measure purpose in life reflect this future-oriented conceptualization and research using these measures has consistently found that purpose in life tends to be lower for older adults than for those in earlier stages of life. In this article, we use an illustrative case study to explore the concept of purpose in life in very late life and critically challenge existing conceptualizations and measures of purpose in life. We examine the two most commonly used measures of purpose in life, the Purpose in Life Test and the Ryff Purpose Subscale and identify specific items that should be reconsidered for use with older adults in very late life. Guided by Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, we then reconceptualize purpose in life in very late life and posit that it consists of three domains—the retrospective past, the near present, and the transcendental post-mortem. We conclude with suggestions on the development of new measures of purpose in life in very late life that are reflective of this shift in time horizons and the specific characteristics of this unique time in life.

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Purpose in Life and Associated Cognitive and Affective Mechanisms

Life Project Scale: a new measure to assess the coherence of the intended future

Aging with Purpose: Developmental Changes and Benefits of Purpose in Life Throughout the Lifespan

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Anderson, K.A., Fields, N.L., Cassidy, J. et al. Purpose in Life: A Reconceptualization for Very Late Life. J Happiness Stud 23 , 2337–2348 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00512-7

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Annual Review of Psychology

Volume 72, 2021, review article, the science of meaning in life.

Laura A. King 1 , and Joshua A. Hicks 2
View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: 1 Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA; email: [email protected] 2 Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA; email: [email protected]
Vol. 72:561-584 (Volume publication date January 2021) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-072420-122921
First published as a Review in Advance on September 08, 2020
Copyright © 2021 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

Meaning in life has long been a mystery of human existence. In this review, we seek to demystify this construct. Focusing on the subjective experience of meaning in life, we review how it has been measured and briefly describe its correlates. Then we review evidence that meaning in life, for all its mystery, is a rather commonplace experience. We then define the construct and review its constituent facets: comprehension/coherence, purpose, and existential mattering/significance. We review the many experiences that have been shown to enhance meaning in life and close by considering important remaining research questions about this fascinating topic.

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Purpose in Life Predicts Better Emotional Recovery from Negative Stimuli

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

Affiliation Center for Women's Health and Health Disparities Research, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

Affiliation Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom

Affiliation Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Affiliations Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, Institute on Aging, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America

Stacey M. Schaefer,
Jennifer Morozink Boylan,
Carien M. van Reekum,
Regina C. Lapate,
Catherine J. Norris,
Carol D. Ryff,
Richard J. Davidson

Published: November 13, 2013
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329
Reader Comments

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/ ), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation.

Citation: Schaefer SM, Morozink Boylan J, van Reekum CM, Lapate RC, Norris CJ, Ryff CD, et al. (2013) Purpose in Life Predicts Better Emotional Recovery from Negative Stimuli. PLoS ONE 8(11): e80329. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329

Editor: Kevin Paterson, University of Leicester, United Kingdom

Received: May 8, 2013; Accepted: October 2, 2013; Published: November 13, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Schaefer et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging (PO1-AG020166), the National Institute on Mental Health (R01 MH043454), and the Waisman Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (Waisman IDDRC), P30HD03352. J. Morozink Boylan was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH018931-22). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Mental Health or the National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Growing evidence from epidemiological research suggests that self-reported psychological well-being is important for both health and longevity, potentially through mechanisms promoting resilience in the face of adversity (see [1] , [2] for recent theoretical reviews). Ryff defined psychological well-being in terms of six key dimensions: autonomy (capacity for self-determination), environmental mastery (ability to manage one’s surrounding world), personal growth (realization of potential), positive relations with others (high-quality relationships), purpose in life (meaning and direction in life), and self-acceptance (positive self-regard) [3] , [4] . Higher levels of purpose in life, personal growth, and positive relations have been linked to lower cardiovascular risk (lower glycosylated hemoglobin, lower weight, lower waist-hip ratios, and higher “good” cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein (HDL)) as well as better neuroendocrine regulation (lower salivary cortisol throughout the day) [5] . Higher profiles on purpose in life and positive relations with others have also been linked to lower inflammatory factors: interleukin-6 (IL-6) and its soluble receptor (sIL-64) [6] , providing empirical support linking these well-being dimensions to better health profiles.

Recent evidence suggests that relative to other dimensions of well-being, purpose in life appears to be particularly important in predicting future health and mortality. In a prospective, longitudinal, epidemiological study of community-dwelling older persons without dementia (Rush Memory and Aging Project), greater purpose in life was associated with better ability to perform day-to-day activities and less mobility disability in the future [7] . Those who reported greater purpose in life exhibited better cognition at follow-up, had a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment, and a slower rate of cognitive decline [8] . In fact, people who reported high levels of purpose in life (90 th percentile or higher) were 2.4 times more likely to remain free of Alzheimer Disease than people who reported low levels (10 th percentile or lower). Moreover, on postmortem examination of the brain for Alzheimer Disease-related pathology, purpose in life modified the associations between cognition and both global pathologic change and plaque accumulation [9] , suggesting that having greater purpose in life may protect against the detrimental effects of aging-related changes in the brain that have been linked to Alzheimer Disease. Finally, greater purpose in life was associated with a reduced risk of mortality from all causes [10] . Collectively, these findings suggest that the ability to find meaning and direction in life may help buffer or slow the effects of aging and even the ultimate outcome: death.

Besides healthier biomarker levels, slowed effects of aging, and increased longevity, higher levels of psychological well-being have also been associated with lower rates of depression [3] , [4] , [11] , with the dimension of purpose in life consistently showing negative relations with depressive symptomatology. In fact, people in their 50s who report low psychological well-being are more than twice as likely to suffer from depression when in their 60s, even after controlling for previous depression history, personality, demographic, economic, and physical health variables [12] , suggesting that low well-being is a substantial risk factor for future depression. Depression is characterized by high levels of brooding, and often is associated with a ruminative thinking style, and attentional biases suggesting impaired attentional disengagement from negative information (see [13] , [14] for review), which may contribute to the prolonged responses to negative emotional stimuli that have been observed both in psychophysiological and neuroimaging measures, such as prolonged pupil dilations and amygdala activation [15] – [18] . The link between low psychological well-being and the dysregulated emotion observed in depression is further supported by findings from the neuroimaging literature: those reporting higher levels of purpose in life show better regulation of the amygdala (a brain region involved in fear and anxiety-related processes) by the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, such that activity in the amygdala is reduced and the ventral anterior cingulate cortex is activated to a greater extent for negative relative to neutral pictures [19] . Moreover, high purpose in life was associated with slower judgments of the valence of negative relative to neutral pictures, suggesting that persons having goals and a sense of direction in life appraised the negative pictures as less salient and potentially less threatening than did persons with lower levels of purpose in life. Finally, whereas depressive symptomatology has been linked to decreased gray matter volume in the insula [20] , purpose in life (as well as the other well-being dimensions of personal growth and positive relations with others) are positively associated with right insular gray matter volume [21] .

How might purpose in life protect against depression, the body and brain ravages of growing older, and the accumulated toll of stress and challenges over the years? Based on the accumulating evidence, we hypothesize that one mechanism through which high purpose in life may protect against depression and the wear and tear of life stress is by providing a buffer from negative events, promoting reappraisal and motivated coping processes, decreasing brooding and ruminative thinking styles, supporting faster and better recovery, and thus increasing resiliency. Therefore, we hypothesize that higher levels of self-reported purpose in life will be associated with laboratory measures of emotional recovery, specifically, better automatic regulation of negative emotion as exhibited by better recovery from negative emotional stimuli. Importantly, this hypothesis combines phenomenologically-experienced aspects of well-being with objectively measured laboratory assessments of the time course of emotional responses, as this combination may offer unique windows on adaptive human functioning.

Heterogeneity is the rule in emotion research, characterized by large individual differences in how people react to the same emotional event or stimulus, and in how quickly and easily they recover from that stimulus (see Figure 1 for a hypothetical characterization of different emotional time course profiles to the same stimulus). While one person may briefly feel the effect of an unpleasant event, another may suffer a lingering and pervasive effect on mood. These individual differences in emotional reactivity and regulation constitute a person's affective style (see [22] , [23] for theoretical reviews), may be critically influenced by a person’s sense of life purpose, and may also shape how much purpose and meaning one feels, suggesting bi-directional influences between these constructs

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Note that although subjects A and B have similar initial reactivity during the 4 s picture presentation period, after picture offset they differ in emotional recovery. Subject A shows a prolonged poor recovery, whereas Subject B recovers more rapidly. Subject C demonstrates greater initial reactivity with rapid recovery, whereas Subject D exemplifies an individual who may show smaller, blunted emotional reactivity but severely impaired recovery.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329.g001

Affective psychophysiological research provides tools to measure an individual’s affective state without many of the demand characteristics biasing self-report (for review see [24] , [25] ), allowing for objective characterization of the time course of an individual’s emotional reactivity to and recovery from an emotion-eliciting stimulus [26] . Eyeblink reflex magnitude (EBR) measured to an acoustic startle probe from the orbicularis oculi muscle is emotion-modulated, such that activity is potentiated in the presence of an aversive stimulus and is diminished in the presence of a pleasant stimulus [27] , [28] . Just as facial musculature recordings reflect a person’s affective state and their emotional response to stimuli, the temporal resolution possible with the EBR allows for differentiation of aspects of the emotional response from regulation of that response [26] , [29] , [30] , providing objective estimates of both the magnitude and time course of emotional responses during and following incentives and challenges.

In the current paradigm, EBR measurements were obtained during the picture presentation period and after picture offset. We define emotional reactivity as reflected in measurements during the affective picture presentation when the emotionally evocative stimulus is present, and emotional recovery as measurements obtained after picture offset when the stimulus is no longer present. Parsing the time course in this way allows us to investigate individual differences in both reactivity and recovery. By including both the measures of reactivity and recovery in the same analytic models, we can examine individual differences in our measures during the recovery period unconfounded by variations in reactivity. Referring back to Figure 1 , imagine two people who show similar reactions to the negative stimulus when it is present. One person’s regulatory capacities may facilitate quick recovery from a negative stimulus after it is removed (hypothetical subject B), while another may perseverate and show delayed recovery (hypothetical subject A), such as that observed in depression and dysphoria [15] , [17] , [31] . In this way, we can investigate the differential relationships between emotional reactivity and recovery with higher levels of purpose in life. We predicted that those subjects who reported higher levels of purpose in life would exhibit greater emotional recovery from the negative pictures, controlling for their initial reactivity to these pictures, thereby indicating a more adaptive emotion regulatory profile.

Ethics Statement

Ethical approval for telephone and mail surveys was obtained from the Social and Behavioral Science Institutional Review Board at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. All participants gave verbal consent, which included assurance of voluntary participation and confidentiality of data. The ethics committee approved the waiver of written consent. Such passive consent is customary for survey research by telephone and mail questionnaire. Ethical approval for the follow-up psychophysiological session was obtained from the Health Sciences Institutional Review Board at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and all participants provided written consent.

Participants

The Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) began in 1995 with a national sample of Americans ( N = 7,108) aged 25–74 years [32] . The majority (59.71%) was recruited through random digit dialing (RDD). The remaining respondents included siblings of the RDD sample and a large sample of twins ( N = 1,914). Data collection focused on sociodemographic and psychosocial assessments obtained through phone interviews and self-administered questionnaires. In 2004, these survey assessments were repeated (MIDUS II). The retention rate from MIDUS I to MIDUS II was 75% (adjusted for mortality).

Psychophysiological data were collected on a subset of MIDUS II participants living in the Midwest who were able and willing to travel to our laboratory. The psychophysiology experiment followed the survey assessment on average over two years later (mean (SD) = 881 (26) days). A total of 331 (183 female) participants (age range 36–84 yrs, mean (SD) = 55.41 (11.12) yrs) agreed to participate in our experiment. For a variety of technical, responsivity, and other data quality issues, 253 (147 female/106 male; 185 singletons/68 twin or sibling) participants (age range 36–84 yrs, mean (SD) = 54.68 (10.97) yrs) are included because they completed the psychological well-being questionnaire in the survey assessment and provided a total of 10 or more quantifiable eyeblink responses to the startle probes during the psychophysiological paradigm.

Data and documentation for MIDUS I and II, including all MIDUS projects, are publically available at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR; www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/landing.jsp ).

Given the growing focus on purpose in life as a key predictor of long-term health outcomes and underlying neurophysiology, our hypotheses targeted this particular dimension of well-being, although we included examination of all six scales of well-being collected in the survey assessments in MIDUS II (Scales of Psychological Well-Being; [3] , [4] ). Purpose in life refers to the tendency to derive meaning from life’s experiences and possess a sense of intentionality and goal directedness that guides behavior. The other five dimensions of psychological well-being included autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, and self-acceptance. Each scale had seven items (internal consistency for these scales ranged from.69 to.85).

Other Covariates

Other variables used in the analyses included age at the psychophysiological session, gender, the total number of valid eyeblink responses to the startle probes over the course of the psychophysiology experiment, the lag between the survey and psychophysiological assessments in days, trait positive and negative affect measured with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; [33] ), and subjective well-being measures including the Satisfaction with Life Scale [34] and an abbreviated version of the Gratitude Scale [35] asking participants to rate the following two statements: “I have so much in life to be thankful for” and “I am grateful to a wide variety of people.” The affect and subjective well-being measures were collected at the time of the psychophysiology session.

A total of 90 International Affective Picture System pictures (IAPS; [36] ) were presented in a randomized sequence. According to the IAPS normative ratings, 30 negative (mean (SD) = 2.89 (0.61)), 30 neutral (mean (SD) = 5.14 (0.52)) and 30 positive (mean (SD) = 7.24 (0.44)) pictures were selected, with the positive and negative pictures matched on arousal (negative pictures mean (SD) = 5.35 (0.54); neutral mean (SD) = 3.22 (0.73); positive mean (SD) = 5.23 (0.73)). All valences were matched on luminosity, complexity, and number of pictures with social content.

Psychophysiological Procedure

The psychophysiological procedures have been described previously (see [30] for additional details). After informed consent was obtained, the participant completed questionnaires. The participant watched the positive, neutral, and negative pictures, and heard acoustic startle probes (50 ms, 105 dB, white noise bursts with very rapid onset time) presented through headphones. Each picture had either a yellow or purple border around it during the first 500 ms of the picture presentation, and participants responded as quickly as possible to the color of the border by pressing one of two keyboard buttons marked with the color with either their index or middle finger of their dominant hand. This color border identification task was used to keep subjects’ attention on the task and ensure they looked at the pictures. Pictures were presented on the screen for 4 s and were preceded by a 1 s fixation screen (see Figure 2 for a schematic of the psychophysiological paradigm’s design). Acoustic startle probes were inserted at three time points (randomized across trials to maintain an average inter-probe interval of ∼ 16 s). One probe occurred during the picture presentation (2900 ms following picture onset), a 2 nd probe occurred 400 ms after picture offset (4400 ms following picture onset), and a 3 rd probe occurred 1900 ms after picture offset (5900 ms following picture onset). A total of nine probes at each of the three time points were presented for each picture valence category, resulting in three non-probed trials for each picture valence. Because preliminary data analysis revealed reduced magnitude EBRs at the 2 nd probe (across all valences), these data were dropped from all further analyses because it suggests the 2 nd probe was affected by prepulse inhibition due to too close temporal proximity to the picture offset [37] . Participants who did not respond with a perceptible EBR on 10 or more of the 81-probed trials were excluded from EBR analyses as they were considered non-responders to the startle probe.

30 positive, 30 negative, and 30 neutral pictures were displayed individually on separate trials. Participants responded as quickly as possible to the border color (purple or yellow) presented during the first 0.5 s of the picture presentation in order to maintain attention during the task. Startle probes were presented at 2900 ms after picture onset (assessing reactivity ) and 1900 ms after picture offset (assessing recovery ). Note: to avoid publication of an IAPS picture, the example negative picture was selected from the author’s personal collection to be representative of a prototypical IAPS picture. As the mother of the baby in the photograph, she has given written informed consent, as outlined in the PLOS consent form, to publication of their photograph.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329.g002

Analytic Strategy

Manipulation check. We used a linear mixed-effects model to test the expected valence (negative, neutral, positive) modulation effect, a main effect of probe time (reactivity, recovery), and a valence x probe time interaction on EBR magnitude. The model included a family-specific random effect to account for within-family dependence between twins and siblings, as well as a participant-within-family-specific random effect to account for the within-person dependence between EBR measurements. Pairwise comparisons between valences (negative, neutral, and positive) and probe times (reactivity, recovery) were adjusted for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni correction.

Tests of purpose in life and the other psychological well-being dimensions predicting EBR measures of emotional reactivity and recovery to negative stimuli. First, zero-order correlations were calculated between purpose in life and the other five psychological well-being dimensions with EBR magnitude measures obtained (1) at the reactivity probe, (2) at the recovery probe, and (3) with a recovery residual reflecting EBR magnitude at the recovery probe regressed on EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe to remove variation due to differences in reactivity (EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe and the recovery probe are inversely correlated, r = –0.15, p = 0.02).

Because age and gender have previously been shown to influence measures of emotional reactivity and recovery [29] , [30] , linear mixed-effects models were used to test the ability of each of the psychological well-being dimensions to predict EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe as well as EBR magnitude at the recovery probe on negative trials, while controlling for EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe (only included in the recovery models), age, gender, the total number of valid eyeblink responses to the startle probe over the course of the psychophysiology experiment, and the lag between the survey and psychophysiological assessments in days (A Models). The total number of valid eyeblinks was included as a covariate so that the results were not confounded with the reliability of the estimated EBR magnitude. Then to ascertain the specificity of purpose in life’s ability to predict recovery, we added the other five psychological well-being dimensions, both trait positive and negative affect (PANAS: mean positive affect and mean negative affect) and subjective well-being measures (Satisfaction with Life Scale mean and abbreviated Gratitude Scale mean) as covariates in one linear mixed-effects model (B Model) while including all of the covariates included in the earlier models. All models included a family-specific random effect to account for within-family dependence between twins and siblings. Finally, we used linear mixed effects models to control for data dependencies due to twins and siblings being included in the sample rather than randomly pick one person from each family cluster because the latter reduces the sample size, thereby compromising effect size estimates and power.

Manipulation Check

Emotion significantly modulated EBR magnitude. A significant main effect of valence was found across probe times, F(2,1527) = 8.96, p <0.001, such that EBR magnitude was greater across probe times on negative (mean (SE) = 0.08 (0.03)) compared to both neutral (mean (SE) = –0.04 (0.03)) and positive (mean (SE) = –0.06 (0.03)) trials. A significant main effect of probe time was found across valences, F(1,1527) = 13.25, p <0.001, such that EBR magnitude was greater across valences during the recovery probe time after picture offset (mean (SE) = 0.05 (0.02)) than the reactivity probe time during the picture presentation (mean (SE) = –0.06 (0.02)), consistent with previous reports that startle responses are larger for humans in darkness than in light [38] , reflecting the change in room light levels between a picture on the screen compared to a black computer screen. The valence x probe time interaction was marginally significant, F(2,1527) = 2.42, p = 0.09. See Figure 3 for the EBR averages by valence and probe time.

Emotion modulation was observed in the EBR measures with a significant main effect of valence: EBR magnitude was greater on negative compared to both neutral and positive trials across probe times. A main effect of probe time showed larger EBR magnitude across valences in response to the recovery probe after picture offset when the computer screen was black than to the reactivity probe during the picture presentation (consistent with findings of larger responses to startling stimuli in darkness than in light). Mean EBR magnitude was significantly greater on negative than both neutral and positive trials at the reactivity probe, and greater on negative than positive trials at the recovery probe.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329.g003

Effects of Purpose in life and the other Psychological Well-being Dimensions

The zero order correlations between each of the psychological well-being dimensions with EBR magnitude measures obtained (1) at the reactivity probe, (2) at the recovery probe, and (3) with a recovery residual reflecting EBR magnitude at the recovery probe regressed on EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe to remove variation due to differences in reactivity are presented in Table 1 . These correlations reveal that both purpose in life and positive relations with others predicted larger EBR magnitude during the picture presentations indicating greater reactivity to the negative pictures. Both purpose in life and self-acceptance also predicted significantly smaller EBR magnitude at the recovery probe, but only purpose in life predicted significantly smaller recovery residuals, when EBR magnitude at the recovery probe is regressed on EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe, controlling for differences in reactivity. See Figure 4 for a scatterplot of the linear relations between purpose in life and the EBR recovery residual.

Note: (1) EBR values are log-transformed and then z-scored within each participant. (2) The EBR recovery measure here reflects EBR magnitude at the recovery probe regressed on EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe, removing variation due to differences in reactivity. (3) The relation remains significant if the outlier is removed: Purpose in life x EBR negative magnitude residual at recovery r = –0.15, p = 0.03.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329.g004

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329.t001

When demographic and data quality variables were included as covariates, the linear mixed-effects models testing the ability of each of the well-being dimensions to predict reactivity were not significant (all β s<0.009, all p s > 0.13). However, the estimates presented in Table 2 show that when demographic, data quality, and EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe were included as covariates in the models with EBR magnitude at the recovery probe, purpose in life still predicted smaller EBR at the recovery probe; A Models: β = –0.016, t (230) = –3.02, p = 0.003. Personal growth and self-acceptance also predicted EBR magnitude at the recovery probe in the A Models, however only purpose in life remained at trend level when all of the above covariates were included as well as all of the psychological well-being dimensions, trait positive and negative affect, and subjective well-being variables in the same model, β = –0.017, t (216.90) = –1.86, p = 0.064 (see Table 2 ). Thus, the findings from the linear mixed-effects model, which adjusts for the potential dependencies in the data from twins and siblings, show that when all of the psychological well-being dimensions, subjective well-being, and trait positive and negative affect are included in the same analytic model, purpose in life still predicts at trend level lower EBR magnitude at recovery. Therefore, higher levels of purpose in life are associated with better recovery from negative emotional stimuli even with the effect of the other well-being dimensions and positive and negative trait affect removed.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080329.t002

Finally, as seen in Figure 4 , there was one outlier on EBR magnitude at the recovery probe. All of the analyses reported above include the outlier. When the outlier participant’s data is excluded from the linear mixed-effects models, purpose in life still significantly predicted EBR recovery in each of the models: A Model linear mixed-effects model: β = – 0.014, t (229) = –2.64, p = 0.009; and B Model linear mixed-effects model: β = – 0.017, t (216.61) = –2.05, p = .042. Importantly, only purpose in life and none of the other well-being dimensions predicted EBR recovery in the B Model when all of the well-being dimensions were included in the same model, regardless of whether the outlier was included or not, all p s > 0.43.

Higher levels of purpose in life, self-reported on average over two years prior, predicted better recovery from a negative stimulus measured with the eyeblink startle response (EBR), such that those persons reporting greater life purpose exhibited smaller EBR magnitude after picture offset. The significant association between purpose in life and EBR magnitude measures of recovery were observed even when differences in EBR magnitude at the reactivity probe during the stimulus presentation were statistically removed. Moreover, the relations between purpose in life and emotional recovery from negative stimuli were still significant when controlling for participants’ age, gender, the five other psychological well-being dimensions, self-reported trait positive and negative affect, and measures of their subjective well-being.

The better recovery exhibited after stimulus offset by those with high life purpose reflects a more healthy emotional time course profile. Davis has demonstrated a crucial role of the central nucleus of the amygdala in the fear potentiation of the startle response in rats [39] , and human studies suggest a similar role for the amygdala in emotion-modulated startle [40] – [42] . Thus the current finding of reduced startle during recovery is consistent with previous reports from our laboratory [19] showing better regulation of the amygdalar response to negative pictures in people with high levels of purpose in life.

Purpose in life stood out among the well-being measures in its ability to predict EBR measures of recovery, suggesting that feeling purpose and meaning in one’s life may contribute to a more healthful and adaptive regulation of negative emotional responses. Taubitz, Robinson, and Larson (2013) recently examined the time course of EBR emotion-modulation in dysphoric women by examining both reactivity to the picture presentation and recovery after picture offset [33] . Dysphoric females, compared to non-dysphoric females, exhibited blunted EBR for negative relative to neutral pictures during the picture presentation (less reactivity), but heightened EBR for negative relative to neutral pictures after picture offset (poorer recovery), as demonstrated by hypothetical Participant D in Figure 1 . In other words, dysphoric females exhibited a recovery profile comparable to that which persons with low purpose in life exhibited in the current study. However, it is important to point out that in the current study, the significant relations between purpose in life and recovery were observed even when gender and both trait positive and negative affect were controlled.

Poor recovery from negative stimuli has been observed in depressed individuals who display sustained pupil dilation and amygdala activation to negative words [15] – [17] . While nondepressed individuals increase dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation and decrease amygdala activation when reappraising emotional pictures, depressed persons do not [18] . Depression is also characterized by working memory and attentional biases, including increased elaboration of negative information, problems disengaging from negative material, and deficits in cognitive control when processing negative information [13] , [14] . Individuals with depression usually report high levels of rumination [43] and greater use of emotional suppression [44] . Both rumination and suppression are ineffective emotion regulation techniques that can actually increase negative emotions [45] and the associated sympathetic nervous system activity [46] , [47] , suggesting a potential mechanism underlying the physical burden of the dysregulated negative affect characterizing the disorder. According to the World Health Survey, depression has a greater impact on overall health than arthritis, diabetes, angina, and asthma [48] . Because lower levels of psychological well-being, including lower levels of purpose in life, are correlated with higher rates of depression [3] , [4] , [11] , [12] , [49] , the psychological well-being and depression literature further supports the linkage between emotional regulatory skills and purpose in life.

How might higher levels of purpose in life contribute to the ability to recover from aversive and unpleasant events? Additional research is needed. However, having greater purpose in life may provide motivation to constructively learn from and reappraise negative events in an adaptive manner and avoid brooding and ruminative tendencies, so as to quickly refocus on one’s goals and purpose. Possessing higher levels of well-being, especially purpose in life, may provide a wealth of resources one can use to cope with the current situation, motivating an adaptive and proactive handling of the situation, buffering the effect of adverse experiences, and thereby facilitating and fostering the learning and development of even greater emotion regulation skill over time. This idea is supported by reports that purpose in life is a key factor associated with better recovery from trauma in at-risk African American populations [50] as well as Pakistani earthquake survivors [51] , such that those reporting higher levels of purpose in life had decreased rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after suffering trauma. Purpose in life might be a “resilience factor,” protecting against the development of psychopathologies such as PTSD and depression after stress and trauma exposure, or even the repeated minor stresses experienced over the course of a lifetime. The current study suggests a mechanism through which purpose in life may confer protection is by facilitating automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation.

In turn, the reverse may also be true, to experience high well-being and purpose, individuals may need to be able to flexibly modify their emotional responses depending on the situation [52] whether it is to (i) temporarily up-regulate and increase a negative emotion to empathize with another or (ii) quickly down-regulate and decrease a negative emotion to refocus attention and concentrate on a task after experiencing an unpleasant event. Thus, people more skilled and adept at emotion regulation may have advantages in work and family life that nurture greater life success, including a greater sense of mastery, growth, and especially purpose in life. Moreover, the connections between purpose in life and emotional recovery/regulation are likely reciprocal in nature over time. Those with a greater sense of purpose in life may be better prepared to respond to emotional challenges more quickly and efficiently as our data show. However, better emotional recovery from negative stimuli, particularly cumulatively through development, might also lead to greater purpose in life. Our study tested the ability of purpose in life, measured about two years prior, to predict emotional recovery, underscoring the need for additional studies to test whether the relationship between purpose in life and emotion regulatory abilities are uni- or bidirectional, especially at different stages in the life span.

In conclusion, this longitudinal investigation combined phenomenologically-experienced aspects of well-being with automatic, objectively measured assessments of emotional reactivity and recovery obtained in the laboratory over two years after the well-being assessment. The MIDUS study features a remarkably large sample with a wide age range, unique for an experiment utilizing psychophysiological measures. Our findings suggest that higher levels of self-reported purpose in life predict a person’s future ability to recover from exposure to negative stimuli. Persons with higher purpose in life showed a facilitated recovery with smaller eyeblink startle responses after negative stimuli offset, suggesting a healthier overall emotional time course. Additional research testing potential mechanisms by which purpose in life may be related to emotional recovery skills [12] and confer resilience from trauma [50] , [51] , as well as how better emotional recovery skills may contribute to purpose in life is warranted. Purposeful life engagement has increasingly been linked to better health outcomes, including assessments of morbidity and mortality [7] , [10] as well as intervening biological mechanisms [9] , [53] . Understanding brain-based emotion regulation processes that contribute to these outcomes are important next steps.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their gratitude to Larry Greischar, David Bachhuber, Kristin Javaras, Adam Koppenhaver, Lucas Hinsenkamp, Isa Dolski, and a number of students and staff from the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior for their assistance with data collection and reduction. We also wish to thank Barry Radler and Gayle Love from the Institute on Aging for their dedication and continued assistance in making all MIDUS logistics work.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: CMvR CJN CDR RJD. Performed the experiments: CMvR RCL CJN SMS. Analyzed the data: SMS JMB CMvR RCL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SMS JMB CMvR RCL CDR RJD. Wrote the paper: SMS JMB CMvR RCL CDR CJN RJD.

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The Meaning of Life

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms (with such talk having arisen only in the past 250 years or so, on which see Landau 1997). Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. Relatedly, think about Koheleth, the presumed author of the Biblical book Ecclesiastes, describing life as “futility” and akin to “the pursuit of wind,” Nietzsche on nihilism, as well as Schopenhauer when he remarks that whenever we reach a goal we have longed for we discover “how vain and empty it is.” While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and virtue (and their opposites), they are straightforwardly construed (roughly) as accounts of which highly ranked purposes a person ought to realize that would make her life significant (if any would).

Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only since the 1980s or so that a distinct field of the meaning of life has been established in Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy, on which this survey focuses, and it is only in the past 20 years that debate with real depth and intricacy has appeared. Two decades ago analytic reflection on life’s meaning was described as a “backwater” compared to that on well-being or good character, and it was possible to cite nearly all the literature in a given critical discussion of the field (Metz 2002). Neither is true any longer. Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy of life’s meaning has become vibrant, such that there is now way too much literature to be able to cite comprehensively in this survey. To obtain focus, it tends to discuss books, influential essays, and more recent works, and it leaves aside contributions from other philosophical traditions (such as the Continental or African) and from non-philosophical fields (e.g., psychology or literature). This survey’s central aim is to acquaint the reader with current analytic approaches to life’s meaning, sketching major debates and pointing out neglected topics that merit further consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people tend to pose one of three questions: “What are you talking about?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Is life in fact meaningful?”. The literature on life's meaning composed by those working in the analytic tradition (on which this entry focuses) can be usefully organized according to which question it seeks to answer. This survey starts off with recent work that addresses the first, abstract (or “meta”) question regarding the sense of talk of “life’s meaning,” i.e., that aims to clarify what we have in mind when inquiring into the meaning of life (section 1). Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaningfulness (sections 2–3). There is in the making a sub-field of applied meaning that parallels applied ethics, in which meaningfulness is considered in the context of particular cases or specific themes. Examples include downshifting (Levy 2005), implementing genetic enhancements (Agar 2013), making achievements (Bradford 2015), getting an education (Schinkel et al. 2015), interacting with research participants (Olson 2016), automating labor (Danaher 2017), and creating children (Ferracioli 2018). In contrast, this survey focuses nearly exclusively on contemporary normative-theoretical approaches to life’s meanining, that is, attempts to capture in a single, general principle all the variegated conditions that could confer meaning on life. Finally, this survey examines fresh arguments for the nihilist view that the conditions necessary for a meaningful life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless (section 4).

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

2.1. god-centered views, 2.2. soul-centered views, 3.1. subjectivism, 3.2. objectivism, 3.3. rejecting god and a soul, 4. nihilism, works cited, classic works, collections, books for the general reader, other internet resources, related entries.

One of the field's aims consists of the systematic attempt to identify what people (essentially or characteristically) have in mind when they think about the topic of life’s meaning. For many in the field, terms such as “importance” and “significance” are synonyms of “meaningfulness” and so are insufficiently revealing, but there are those who draw a distinction between meaningfulness and significance (Singer 1996, 112–18; Belliotti 2019, 145–50, 186). There is also debate about how the concept of a meaningless life relates to the ideas of a life that is absurd (Nagel 1970, 1986, 214–23; Feinberg 1980; Belliotti 2019), futile (Trisel 2002), and not worth living (Landau 2017, 12–15; Matheson 2017).

A useful way to begin to get clear about what thinking about life’s meaning involves is to specify the bearer. Which life does the inquirer have in mind? A standard distinction to draw is between the meaning “in” life, where a human person is what can exhibit meaning, and the meaning “of” life in a narrow sense, where the human species as a whole is what can be meaningful or not. There has also been a bit of recent consideration of whether animals or human infants can have meaning in their lives, with most rejecting that possibility (e.g., Wong 2008, 131, 147; Fischer 2019, 1–24), but a handful of others beginning to make a case for it (Purves and Delon 2018; Thomas 2018). Also under-explored is the issue of whether groups, such as a people or an organization, can be bearers of meaning, and, if so, under what conditions.

Most analytic philosophers have been interested in meaning in life, that is, in the meaningfulness that a person’s life could exhibit, with comparatively few these days addressing the meaning of life in the narrow sense. Even those who believe that God is or would be central to life’s meaning have lately addressed how an individual’s life might be meaningful in virtue of God more often than how the human race might be. Although some have argued that the meaningfulness of human life as such merits inquiry to no less a degree (if not more) than the meaning in a life (Seachris 2013; Tartaglia 2015; cf. Trisel 2016), a large majority of the field has instead been interested in whether their lives as individual persons (and the lives of those they care about) are meaningful and how they could become more so.

Focusing on meaning in life, it is quite common to maintain that it is conceptually something good for its own sake or, relatedly, something that provides a basic reason for action (on which see Visak 2017). There are a few who have recently suggested otherwise, maintaining that there can be neutral or even undesirable kinds of meaning in a person’s life (e.g., Mawson 2016, 90, 193; Thomas 2018, 291, 294). However, these are outliers, with most analytic philosophers, and presumably laypeople, instead wanting to know when an individual’s life exhibits a certain kind of final value (or non-instrumental reason for action).

Another claim about which there is substantial consensus is that meaningfulness is not all or nothing and instead comes in degrees, such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some lives as a whole are more meaningful than others. Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people’s lives are less meaningful (or even in a certain sense less “important”) than others, or are even meaningless (unimportant), and still maintain that people have an equal standing from a moral point of view. Consider a consequentialist moral principle according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life, or a Kantian approach according to which all people have a dignity in virtue of their capacity for autonomous decision-making, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity. For both moral outlooks, we could be required to help people with relatively meaningless lives.

Yet another relatively uncontroversial element of the concept of meaningfulness in respect of individual persons is that it is logically distinct from happiness or rightness (emphasized in Wolf 2010, 2016). First, to ask whether someone’s life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is pleasant or she is subjectively well off. A life in an experience machine or virtual reality device would surely be a happy one, but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, a number would say that one’s life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one’s well-being, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one’s self-interest. Second, asking whether a person’s existence over time is meaningful is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there are intuitively ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with right action or moral virtue, such as making a scientific discovery or becoming an excellent dancer. Now, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if, or even because, it were unhappy or immoral, but that would be to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, far from indicating that speaking of “meaningfulness” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness. The question of what (if anything) makes a person’s life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the questions of what makes a life happy or moral, although it could turn out that the best answer to the former question appeals to an answer to one of the latter questions.

Supposing, then, that talk of “meaning in life” connotes something good for its own sake that can come in degrees and that is not analytically equivalent to happiness or rightness, what else does it involve? What more can we say about this final value, by definition? Most contemporary analytic philosophers would say that the relevant value is absent from spending time in an experience machine (but see Goetz 2012 for a different view) or living akin to Sisyphus, the mythic figure doomed by the Greek gods to roll a stone up a hill for eternity (famously discussed by Albert Camus and Taylor 1970). In addition, many would say that the relevant value is typified by the classic triad of “the good, the true, and the beautiful” (or would be under certain conditions). These terms are not to be taken literally, but instead are rough catchwords for beneficent relationships (love, collegiality, morality), intellectual reflection (wisdom, education, discoveries), and creativity (particularly the arts, but also potentially things like humor or gardening).

Pressing further, is there something that the values of the good, the true, the beautiful, and any other logically possible sources of meaning involve? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One salient view is that the concept of meaning in life is a cluster or amalgam of overlapping ideas, such as fulfilling higher-order purposes, meriting substantial esteem or admiration, having a noteworthy impact, transcending one’s animal nature, making sense, or exhibiting a compelling life-story (Markus 2003; Thomson 2003; Metz 2013, 24–35; Seachris 2013, 3–4; Mawson 2016). However, there are philosophers who maintain that something much more monistic is true of the concept, so that (nearly) all thought about meaningfulness in a person’s life is essentially about a single property. Suggestions include being devoted to or in awe of qualitatively superior goods (Taylor 1989, 3–24), transcending one’s limits (Levy 2005), or making a contribution (Martela 2016).

Recently there has been something of an “interpretive turn” in the field, one instance of which is the strong view that meaning-talk is logically about whether and how a life is intelligible within a wider frame of reference (Goldman 2018, 116–29; Seachris 2019; Thomas 2019; cf. Repp 2018). According to this approach, inquiring into life’s meaning is nothing other than seeking out sense-making information, perhaps a narrative about life or an explanation of its source and destiny. This analysis has the advantage of promising to unify a wide array of uses of the term “meaning.” However, it has the disadvantages of being unable to capture the intuitions that meaning in life is essentially good for its own sake (Landau 2017, 12–15), that it is not logically contradictory to maintain that an ineffable condition is what confers meaning on life (as per Cooper 2003, 126–42; Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014), and that often human actions themselves (as distinct from an interpretation of them), such as rescuing a child from a burning building, are what bear meaning.

Some thinkers have suggested that a complete analysis of the concept of life’s meaning should include what has been called “anti-matter” (Metz 2002, 805–07, 2013, 63–65, 71–73) or “anti-meaning” (Campbell and Nyholm 2015; Egerstrom 2015), conditions that reduce the meaningfulness of a life. The thought is that meaning is well represented by a bipolar scale, where there is a dimension of not merely positive conditions, but also negative ones. Gratuitous cruelty or destructiveness are prima facie candidates for actions that not merely fail to add meaning, but also subtract from any meaning one’s life might have had.

Despite the ongoing debates about how to analyze the concept of life’s meaning (or articulate the definition of the phrase “meaning in life”), the field remains in a good position to make progress on the other key questions posed above, viz., of what would make a life meaningful and whether any lives are in fact meaningful. A certain amount of common ground is provided by the point that meaningfulness at least involves a gradient final value in a person’s life that is conceptually distinct from happiness and rightness, with exemplars of it potentially being the good, the true, and the beautiful. The rest of this discussion addresses philosophical attempts to capture the nature of this value theoretically and to ascertain whether it exists in at least some of our lives.

2. Supernaturalism

Most analytic philosophers writing on meaning in life have been trying to develop and evaluate theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles, that are meant to capture all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. As in moral philosophy, there are recognizable “anti-theorists,” i.e., those who maintain that there is too much pluralism among meaning conditions to be able to unify them in the form of a principle (e.g., Kekes 2000; Hosseini 2015). Arguably, though, the systematic search for unity is too nascent to be able to draw a firm conclusion about whether it is available.

The theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, that is, in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views according to which a spiritual realm is central to meaning in life. Most Western philosophers have conceived of the spiritual in terms of God or a soul as commonly understood in the Abrahamic faiths (but see Mulgan 2015 for discussion of meaning in the context of a God uninterested in us). In contrast, naturalist theories are views that the physical world as known particularly well by the scientific method is central to life’s meaning.

There is logical space for a non-naturalist theory, according to which central to meaning is an abstract property that is neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the recent Anglo-American-Australasian literature (Audi 2005).

It is important to note that supernaturalism, a claim that God (or a soul) would confer meaning on a life, is logically distinct from theism, the claim that God (or a soul) exists. Although most who hold supernaturalism also hold theism, one could accept the former without the latter (as Camus more or less did), committing one to the view that life is meaningless or at least lacks substantial meaning. Similarly, while most naturalists are atheists, it is not contradictory to maintain that God exists but has nothing to do with meaning in life or perhaps even detracts from it. Although these combinations of positions are logically possible, some of them might be substantively implausible. The field could benefit from discussion of the comparative attractiveness of various combinations of evaluative claims about what would make life meaningful and metaphysical claims about whether spiritual conditions exist.

Over the past 15 years or so, two different types of supernaturalism have become distinguished on a regular basis (Metz 2019). That is true not only in the literature on life’s meaning, but also in that on the related pro-theism/anti-theism debate, about whether it would be desirable for God or a soul to exist (e.g., Kahane 2011; Kraay 2018; Lougheed 2020). On the one hand, there is extreme supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for any meaning in life. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life is meaningless. On the other hand, there is moderate supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for a great or ultimate meaning in life, although not meaning in life as such. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life could have some meaning, or even be meaningful, but no one’s life could exhibit the most desirable meaning. For a moderate supernaturalist, God or a soul would substantially enhance meaningfulness or be a major contributory condition for it.

There are a variety of ways that great or ultimate meaning has been described, sometimes quantitatively as “infinite” (Mawson 2016), qualitatively as “deeper” (Swinburne 2016), relationally as “unlimited” (Nozick 1981, 618–19; cf. Waghorn 2014), temporally as “eternal” (Cottingham 2016), and perspectivally as “from the point of view of the universe” (Benatar 2017). There has been no reflection as yet on the crucial question of how these distinctions might bear on each another, for instance, on whether some are more basic than others or some are more valuable than others.

Cross-cutting the extreme/moderate distinction is one between God-centered theories and soul-centered ones. According to the former, some kind of connection with God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) constitutes meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance that contains one’s identity). In contrast, by the latter, having a soul and putting it into a certain state is what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Many supernaturalists of course believe that God and a soul are jointly necessary for a (greatly) meaningful existence. However, the simpler view, that only one of them is necessary, is common, and sometimes arguments proffered for the complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler one.

The most influential God-based account of meaning in life has been the extreme view that one’s existence is significant if and only if one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one’s life is meaningful just to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in a particular way that God wants one to do so. If a person failed to do what God intends her to do with her life (or if God does not even exist), then, on the current view, her life would be meaningless.

Thinkers differ over what it is about God’s purpose that might make it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives, but the most influential argument has been that only God’s purpose could be the source of invariant moral rules (Davis 1987, 296, 304–05; Moreland 1987, 124–29; Craig 1994/2013, 161–67) or of objective values more generally (Cottingham 2005, 37–57), where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical. According to this argument, lower goods such as animal pleasure or desire satisfaction could exist without God, but higher ones pertaining to meaning in life, particularly moral virtue, could not. However, critics point to many non-moral sources of meaning in life (e.g., Kekes 2000; Wolf 2010), with one arguing that a universal moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if, say, beneficent actions are (Ellin 1995, 327). In addition, there are a variety of naturalist and non-naturalist accounts of objective morality––and of value more generally––on offer these days, so that it is not clear that it must have a supernatural source in God’s will.

One recurrent objection to the idea that God’s purpose could make life meaningful is that if God had created us with a purpose in mind, then God would have degraded us and thereby undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose. The objection harks back to Jean-Paul Sartre, but in the analytic literature it appears that Kurt Baier was the first to articulate it (1957/2000, 118–20; see also Murphy 1982, 14–15; Singer 1996, 29; Kahane 2011; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). Sometimes the concern is the threat of punishment God would make so that we do God’s bidding, while other times it is that the source of meaning would be constrictive and not up to us, and still other times it is that our dignity would be maligned simply by having been created with a certain end in mind (for some replies to such concerns, see Hanfling 1987, 45–46; Cottingham 2005, 37–57; Lougheed 2020, 111–21).

There is a different argument for an extreme God-based view that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite, unlimited, or ineffable, which Robert Nozick first articulated with care (Nozick 1981, 594–618; see also Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014). The core idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one’s life is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is important. Being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. This work also must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God. The standard objection to this relational rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition. Perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, without being connected to something beyond it, or maybe it could obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is beautiful or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful (Nozick 1989, 167–68; Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

A serious concern for any extreme God-based view is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso, they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical world (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 31–37, 49–50; Landau 2017). Even religiously inclined philosophers have found this hard to deny these days (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005; Mawson 2016, 5; Williams 2020, 132–34).

Largely for that reason, contemporary supernaturalists have tended to opt for moderation, that is, to maintain that God would greatly enhance the meaning in our lives, even if some meaning would be possible in a world without God. One approach is to invoke the relational argument to show that God is necessary, not for any meaning whatsoever, but rather for an ultimate meaning. “Limited transcendence, the transcending of our limits so as to connect with a wider context of value which itself is limited, does give our lives meaning––but a limited one. We may thirst for more” (Nozick 1981, 618). Another angle is to appeal to playing a role in God’s plan, again to claim, not that it is essential for meaning as such, but rather for “a cosmic significance....intead of a significance very limited in time and space” (Swinburne 2016, 154; see also Quinn 2000; Cottingham 2016, 131). Another rationale is that by fulfilling God’s purpose, we would meaningfully please God, a perfect person, as well as be remembered favorably by God forever (Cottingham 2016, 135; Williams 2020, 21–22, 29, 101, 108). Still another argument is that only with God could the deepest desires of human nature be satisfied (e.g., Goetz 2012; Seachris 2013, 20; Cottingham 2016, 127, 136), even if more surface desires could be satisfied without God.

In reply to such rationales for a moderate supernaturalism, there has been the suggestion that it is precisely by virtue of being alone in the universe that our lives would be particularly significant; otherwise, God’s greatness would overshadow us (Kahane 2014). There has also been the response that, with the opportunity for greater meaning from God would also come that for greater anti-meaning, so that it is not clear that a world with God would offer a net gain in respect of meaning (Metz 2019, 34–35). For example, if pleasing God would greatly enhance meaning in our lives, then presumably displeasing God would greatly reduce it and to a comparable degree. In addition, there are arguments for extreme naturalism (or its “anti-theist” cousin) mentioned below (sub-section 3.3).

Notice that none of the above arguments for supernaturalism appeals to the prospect of eternal life (at least not explicitly). Arguments that do make such an appeal are soul-centered, holding that meaning in life mainly comes from having an immortal, spiritual substance that is contiguous with one’s body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. Some think of the afterlife in terms of one’s soul entering a transcendent, spiritual realm (Heaven), while others conceive of one’s soul getting reincarnated into another body on Earth. According to the extreme version, if one has a soul but fails to put it in the right state (or if one lacks a soul altogether), then one’s life is meaningless.

There are three prominent arguments for an extreme soul-based perspective. One argument, made famous by Leo Tolstoy, is the suggestion that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that something is worth doing only if it will make a permanent difference to the world, and that making a permanent difference requires being immortal (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Critics most often appeal to counterexamples, suggesting for instance that it is surely worth your time and effort to help prevent people from suffering, even if you and they are mortal. Indeed, some have gone on the offensive and argued that helping people is worth the sacrifice only if and because they are mortal, for otherwise they could invariably be compensated in an afterlife (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Another recent and interesting criticism is that the major motivations for the claim that nothing matters now if one day it will end are incoherent (Greene 2021).

A second argument for the view that life would be meaningless without a soul is that it is necessary for justice to be done, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be rectified, whether by God or a Karmic force. Something like this argument can be found in Ecclesiastes, and it continues to be defended (e.g., Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, even granting that an afterlife is required for perfectly just outcomes, it is far from obvious that an eternal afterlife is necessary for them, and, then, there is the suggestion that some lives, such as Mandela’s, have been meaningful precisely in virtue of encountering injustice and fighting it.

A third argument for thinking that having a soul is essential for any meaning is that it is required to have the sort of free will without which our lives would be meaningless. Immanuel Kant is known for having maintained that if we were merely physical beings, subjected to the laws of nature like everything else in the material world, then we could not act for moral reasons and hence would be unimportant. More recently, one theologian has eloquently put the point in religious terms: “The moral spirit finds the meaning of life in choice. It finds it in that which proceeds from man and remains with him as his inner essence rather than in the accidents of circumstances turns of external fortune....(W)henever a human being rubs the lamp of his moral conscience, a Spirit does appear. This Spirit is God....It is in the ‘Thou must’ of God and man’s ‘I can’ that the divine image of God in human life is contained” (Swenson 1949/2000, 27–28). Notice that, even if moral norms did not spring from God’s commands, the logic of the argument entails that one’s life could be meaningful, so long as one had the inherent ability to make the morally correct choice in any situation. That, in turn, arguably requires something non-physical about one’s self, so as to be able to overcome whichever physical laws and forces one might confront. The standard objection to this reasoning is to advance a compatibilism about having a determined physical nature and being able to act for moral reasons (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77). It is also worth wondering whether, if one had to have a spiritual essence in order to make free choices, it would have to be one that never perished.

Like God-centered theorists, many soul-centered theorists these days advance a moderate view, accepting that some meaning in life would be possible without immortality, but arguing that a much greater meaning would be possible with it. Granting that Einstein, Mandela, and Picasso had somewhat meaningful lives despite not having survived the deaths of their bodies (as per, e.g., Trisel 2004; Wolf 2015, 89–140; Landau 2017), there remains a powerful thought: more is better. If a finite life with the good, the true, and the beautiful has meaning in it to some degree, then surely it would have all the more meaning if it exhibited such higher values––including a relationship with God––for an eternity (Cottingham 2016, 132–35; Mawson 2016, 2019, 52–53; Williams 2020, 112–34; cf. Benatar 2017, 35–63). One objection to this reasoning is that the infinity of meaning that would be possible with a soul would be “too big,” rendering it difficult for the moderate supernaturalist to make sense of the intution that a finite life such as Einstein’s can indeed count as meaningful by comparison (Metz 2019, 30–31; cf. Mawson 2019, 53–54). More common, though, is the objection that an eternal life would include anti-meaning of various kinds, such as boredom and repetition, discussed below in the context of extreme naturalism (sub-section 3.3).

3. Naturalism

Recall that naturalism is the view that a physical life is central to life’s meaning, that even if there is no spiritual realm, a substantially meaningful life is possible. Like supernaturalism, contemporary naturalism admits of two distinguishable variants, moderate and extreme (Metz 2019). The moderate version is that, while a genuinely meaningful life could be had in a purely physical universe as known well by science, a somewhat more meaningful life would be possible if a spiritual realm also existed. God or a soul could enhance meaning in life, although they would not be major contributors. The extreme version of naturalism is the view that it would be better in respect of life’s meaning if there were no spiritual realm. From this perspective, God or a soul would be anti-matter, i.e., would detract from the meaning available to us, making a purely physical world (even if not this particular one) preferable.

Cross-cutting the moderate/extreme distinction is that between subjectivism and objectivism, which are theoretical accounts of the nature of meaningfulness insofar as it is physical. They differ in terms of the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings. Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual’s pro-attitudes such as her particular desires or ends, which are not shared by everyone. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she strongly wants it or intends to seek it out and she gets it. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is at least partly mind-independent, i.e., obtains not merely in virtue of being the object of anyone’s mental states. Here, something is meaningful (partially) because of its intrinsic nature, in the sense of being independent of whether it is wanted or intended; meaning is instead (to some extent) the sort of thing that merits these reactions.

There is logical space for an orthogonal view, according to which there are invariant standards of meaningfulness constituted by what all human beings would converge on from a certain standpoint. However, it has not been much of a player in the field (Darwall 1983, 164–66).

According to this version of naturalism, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one’s variable pro-attitudes. Common instances are views that one’s life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, achieves one’s highly ranked goals, or does what one believes to be really important (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008). One influential subjectivist has recently maintained that the relevant mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94, 2004). Another recent proposal is that meaningfulness consists of “an active engagement and affirmation that vivifies the person who has freely created or accepted and now promotes and nurtures the projects of her highest concern” (Belliotti 2019, 183).

Subjectivism was dominant in the middle of the twentieth century, when positivism, noncognitivism, existentialism, and Humeanism were influential (Ayer 1947; Hare 1957; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Williams 1976). However, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, inference to the best explanation and reflective equilibrium became accepted forms of normative argumentation and were frequently used to defend claims about the existence and nature of objective value (or of “external reasons,” ones obtaining independently of one’s extant attitudes). As a result, subjectivism about meaning lost its dominance. Those who continue to hold subjectivism often remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 2004, 378–79; Frankfurt 2004, 47–48, 55–57; Wong 2008, 138–39; Evers 2017, 32, 36; Svensson 2017, 54). Theorists are moved to accept subjectivism typically because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are reasonably sure that meaning in life obtains for some people, but do not see how it could be grounded on something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural or the supernatural (or the non-natural). In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or what people want out of their lives. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There is a cluster of other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism, according to which this theory best explains certain intuitive features of meaning in life. For one, subjectivism seems plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94). If a person’s life is significant insofar as she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to believe that meaning simply is a function of those matters for which the person cares. For another, it is uncontroversial that often meaning comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience, as opposed to being bored by it or finding it frustrating (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94; Belliotti 2019, 162–70). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective elements involved. For a third, meaning is often taken to be something that makes life worth continuing for a specific person, i.e., that gives her a reason to get out of bed in the morning, which subjectivism is thought to account for best (Williams 1976; Svensson 2017; Calhoun 2018).

Critics maintain that these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value (or an external reason) in realizing oneself, losing oneself, and having a reason to live (Taylor 1989, 1992; Wolf 2010, 2015, 89–140). One is not really being true to oneself, losing oneself in a meaningful way, or having a genuine reason to live insofar as one, say, successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one’s head (Taylor 1992, 36), cultivates one’s prowess at long-distance spitting (Wolf 2010, 104), collects a big ball of string (Wolf 2010, 104), or, well, eats one’s own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22). The counterexamples suggest that subjective conditions are insufficient to ground meaning in life; there seem to be certain actions, relationships, and states that are objectively valuable (but see Evers 2017, 30–32) and toward which one’s pro-attitudes ought to be oriented, if meaning is to accrue.

So say objectivists, but subjectivists feel the pull of the point and usually seek to avoid the counterexamples, lest they have to bite the bullet by accepting the meaningfulness of maintaining 3,732 hairs on one’s head and all the rest (for some who do, see Svensson 2017, 54–55; Belliotti 2019, 181–83). One important strategy is to suggest that subjectivists can avoid the counterexamples by appealing to the right sort of pro-attitude. Instead of whatever an individual happens to want, perhaps the relevant mental state is an emotional-perceptual one of seeing-as (Alexis 2011; cf. Hosseini 2015, 47–66), a “categorical” desire, that is, an intrinsic desire constitutive of one’s identity that one takes to make life worth continuing (Svensson 2017), or a judgment that one has a good reason to value something highly for its own sake (Calhoun 2018). Even here, though, objectivists will argue that it might “appear that whatever the will chooses to treat as a good reason to engage itself is, for the will, a good reason. But the will itself....craves objective reasons; and often it could not go forward unless it thought it had them” (Wiggins 1988, 136). And without any appeal to objectivity, it is perhaps likely that counterexamples would resurface.

Another subjectivist strategy by which to deal with the counterexamples is the attempt to ground meaningfulness, not on the pro-attitudes of an individual valuer, but on those of a group (Darwall 1983, 164–66; Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Does such an intersubjective move avoid (more of) the counterexamples? If so, does it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning in life is constituted at least in part by something physical beyond merely the fact that it is the object of a pro-attitude. Obtaining the object of some emotion, desire, or judgment is not sufficient for meaningfulness, on this view. Instead, there are certain conditions of the material world that could confer meaning on anyone’s life, not merely because they are viewed as meaningful, wanted for their own sake, or believed to be choiceworthy, but instead (at least partially) because they are inherently worthwhile or valuable in themselves.

Morality (the good), enquiry (the true), and creativity (the beautiful) are widely held instances of activities that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow––along with the counterexamples to subjectivism above––are not. Objectivism is widely thought to be a powerful general explanation of these particular judgments: the former are meaningful not merely because some agent (whether it is an individual, her society, or even God) cares about them or judges them to be worth doing, while the latter simply lack significance and cannot obtain it even if some agent does care about them or judge them to be worth doing. From an objective perspective, it is possible for an individual to care about the wrong thing or to be mistaken that something is worthwhile, and not merely because of something she cares about all the more or judges to be still more choiceworthy. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the existence and nature of value are again relevant to appraising this rationale.

Some objectivists think that being the object of a person’s mental states plays no constitutive role in making that person’s life meaningful, although they of course contend that it often plays an instrumental role––liking a certain activity, after all, is likely to motivate one to do it. Relatively few objectivists are “pure” in that way, although consequentialists do stand out as clear instances (e.g., Singer 1995; Smuts 2018, 75–99). Most objectivists instead try to account for the above intuitions driving subjectivism by holding that a life is more meaningful, not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of propositional attitudes such as cognition, conation, and emotion. Particularly influential has been Susan Wolf’s hybrid view, captured by this pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 2015, 112; see also Kekes 1986, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Raz 2001, 10–40; Mintoff 2008; Wolf 2010, 2016; Fischer 2019, 9–23; Belshaw 2021, 160–81). This theory implies that no meaning accrues to one’s life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a project that is not truly worthwhile, or if one takes up a truly worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, or care about it. A related approach is that, while subjective attraction is not necessary for meaning, it could enhance it (e.g., Audi 2005, 344; Metz 2013, 183–84, 196–98, 220–25). For instance, a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by and alienated from her substantial charity work might have a somewhat significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she felt pride in it or identified with it.

There have been several attempts to capture theoretically what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning in a person’s life. Over the past few decades, one encounters the proposals that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: positively connecting with organic unity beyond oneself (Nozick 1981, 594–619); being creative (Taylor 1987; Matheson 2018); living an emotional life (Solomon 1993; cf. Williams 2020, 56–78); promoting good consequences, such as improving the quality of life of oneself and others (Singer 1995; Audi 2005; Smuts 2018, 75–99); exercising or fostering rational nature in exceptional ways (Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, 177–82; Metz 2013, 222–36); progressing toward ends that can never be fully realized because one’s knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); living virtuously (May 2015, 61–138; McPherson 2020); and loving what is worth loving (Wolf 2016). There is as yet no convergence in the field on one, or even a small cluster, of these accounts.

One feature of a large majority of the above naturalist theories is that they are aggregative or additive, objectionably treating a life as a mere “container” of bits of life that are meaningful considered in isolation from other bits (Brännmark 2003, 330). It has become increasingly common for philosophers of life’s meaning, especially objectivists, to hold that life as a whole, or at least long stretches of it, can substantially affect its meaningfulness beyond the amount of meaning (if any) in its parts.

For instance, a life that has lots of beneficence and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog Day ) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987; Blumenfeld 2009). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful (or otherwise desirable) parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful (desirable) parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2013, 18–22; Dorsey 2015). Still more, a life in which its meaningless (or otherwise undesirable parts) cause its meaningful (desirable) parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this redemptive pattern, “good life-story,” or narrative self-expression (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Wong 2008; Fischer 2009, 145–77; Kauppinen 2012; May 2015, 61–138; Velleman 2015, 141–73). These three cases suggest that meaning can inhere in life as a whole, that is, in the relationships between its parts, and not merely in the parts considered in isolation. However, some would maintain that it is, strictly speaking, the story that is or could be told of a life that matters, not so much the life-story qua relations between events themselves (de Bres 2018).

There are pure or extreme versions of holism present in the literature, according to which the only possible bearer of meaning in life is a person’s life as a whole, and not any isolated activities, relationships, or states (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). A salient argument for this position is that judgments of the meaningfulness of a part of someone’s life are merely provisional, open to revision upon considering how they fit into a wider perspective. So, for example, it would initially appear that taking an ax away from a madman and thereby protecting innocent parties confers some meaning on one’s life, but one might well revise that judgment upon learning that the intention behind it was merely to steal an ax, not to save lives, or that the madman then took out a machine gun, causing much more harm than his ax would have. It is worth considering how far this sort of case is generalizable, and, if it can be to a substantial extent, whether that provides strong evidence that only life as a whole can exhibit meaningfulness.

Perhaps most objectivists would, at least upon reflection, accept that both the parts of a life and the whole-life relationships among the parts can exhibit meaning. Supposing there are two bearers of meaning in a life, important questions arise. One is whether a certain narrative can be meaningful even if its parts are not, while a second is whether the meaningfulness of a part increases if it is an aspect of a meaningful whole (on which see Brännmark 2003), and a third is whether there is anything revealing to say about how to make tradeoffs between the parts and whole in cases where one must choose between them (Blumenfeld 2009 appears to assign lexical priority to the whole).

Naturalists until recently had been largely concerned to show that meaning in life is possible without God or a soul; they have not spent much time considering how such spiritual conditions might enhance meaning, but have, in moderate fashion, tended to leave that possibility open (an exception is Hooker 2008). Lately, however, an extreme form of naturalism has arisen, according to which our lives would probably, if not unavoidably, have less meaning in a world with God or a soul than in one without. Although such an approach was voiced early on by Baier (1957), it is really in the past decade or so that this “anti-theist” position has become widely and intricately discussed.

One rationale, mentioned above as an objection to the view that God’s purpose constitutes meaning in life, has also been deployed to argue that the existence of God as such would necessarily reduce meaning, that is, would consist of anti-matter. It is the idea that master/servant and parent/child analogies so prominent in the monotheist religious traditions reveal something about our status in a world where there is a qualitatively higher being who has created us with certain ends in mind: our independence or dignity as adult persons would be violated (e.g., Baier 1957/2000, 118–20; Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). One interesting objection to this reasoning has been to accept that God’s existence is necessarily incompatible with the sort of meaning that would come (roughly stated) from being one’s own boss, but to argue that God would also make greater sorts of meaning available, offering a net gain to us (Mawson 2016, 110–58).

Another salient argument for thinking that God would detract from meaning in life appeals to the value of privacy (Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 55–110). God’s omniscience would unavoidably make it impossible for us to control another person’s access to the most intimate details about ourselves, which, for some, amounts to a less meaningful life than one with such control. Beyond questioning the value of our privacy in relation to God, one thought-provoking criticism has been to suggest that, if a lack of privacy really would substantially reduce meaning in our lives, then God, qua morally perfect person, would simply avoid knowing everything about us (Tooley 2018). Lacking complete knowledge of our mental states would be compatible with describing God as “omniscient,” so the criticism goes, insofar as that is plausibly understood as having as much knowledge as is morally permissible.

Turn, now, to major arguments for thinking that having a soul would reduce life’s meaning, so that if one wants a maximally meaningful life, one should prefer a purely physical world, or at least one in which people are mortal. First and foremost, there has been the argument that an immortal life could not avoid becoming boring (Williams 1973), rendering life pointless according to many subjective and objective theories. The literature on this topic has become enormous, with the central reply being that immortality need not get boring (for more recent discussions, see Fischer 2009, 79–101, 2019, 117–42; Mawson 2019, 51–52; Williams 2020, 30–41, 123–29; Belshaw 2021, 182–97). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make. Being bored for an eternity would not be blissful or even satisfying, to be sure, but if it served the function of preventing others from being bored for an eternity, would it be meaningful (at least to some degree)? If, as is commonly held, sacrificing one’s life could be meaningful, why not also sacrificing one’s liveliness?

Another reason given to reject eternal life is that it would become repetitive, which would substantially drain it of meaning (Scarre 2007, 54–55; May 2009, 46–47, 64–65, 71; Smuts 2011, 142–44; cf. Blumenfeld 2009). If, as it appears, there are only a finite number of actions one could perform, relationships one could have, and states one could be in during an eternity, one would have to end up doing the same things again. Even though one’s activities might be more valuable than rolling a stone up a hill forever à la Sisyphus, the prospect of doing them over and over again forever is disheartening for many. To be sure, one might not remember having done them before and hence could avoid boredom, but for some philosophers that would make it all the worse, akin to having dementia and forgetting that one has told the same stories. Others, however, still find meaning in such a life (e.g., Belshaw 2021, 197, 205n41).

A third meaning-based argument against immortality invokes considerations of narrative. If the pattern of one’s life as a whole substantially matters, and if a proper pattern would include a beginning, a middle, and an end, it appears that a life that never ends would lack the relevant narrative structure. “Because it would drag on endlessly, it would, sooner or later, just be a string of events lacking all form....With immortality, the novel never ends....How meaningful can such a novel be?” (May 2009, 68, 72; see also Scarre 2007, 58–60). Notice that this objection is distinct from considerations of boredom and repetition (which concern novelty ); even if one were stimulated and active, and even if one found a way not to repeat one’s life in the course of eternity, an immortal life would appear to lack shape. In reply, some reject the idea that a meaningful life must be akin to a novel, and intead opt for narrativity in the form of something like a string of short stories that build on each other (Fischer 2009, 145–77, 2019, 101–16). Others, though, have sought to show that eternity could still be novel-like, deeming the sort of ending that matters to be a function of what the content is and how it relates to the content that came before (e.g., Seachris 2011; Williams 2020, 112–19).

There have been additional objections to immortality as undercutting meaningfulness, but they are prima facie less powerful than the previous three in that, if sound, they arguably show that an eternal life would have a cost, but probably not one that would utterly occlude the prospect of meaning in it. For example, there have been the suggestions that eternal lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Nussbaum 1989, 339; Kass 2002, 266–67), could not exemplify virtues such as courageously risking one’s life for others (Kass 2002, 267–68; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94), and could not obtain meaning from sustaining or saving others’ lives (Nussbaum 1989, 338; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Note that at least the first two rationales turn substantially on the belief in immortality, not quite immortality itself: if one were immortal but forgot that one is or did not know that at all, then one could appreciate life and obtain much of the virtue of courage (and, conversely, if one were not immortal, but thought that one is, then, by the logic of these arguments, one would fail to appreciate limits and be unable to exemplify courage).

The previous two sections addressed theoretical accounts of what would confer meaning on a human person’s life. Although these theories do not imply that some people’s lives are in fact meaningful, that has been the presumption of a very large majority of those who have advanced them. Much of the procedure has been to suppose that many lives have had meaning in them and then to consider in virtue of what they have or otherwise could. However, there are nihilist (or pessimist) perspectives that question this supposition. According to nihilism (pessimism), what would make a life meaningful in principle cannot obtain for any of us.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of extreme supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether a spiritual realm exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither is real, then you are committed to nihilism, to the denial that life can have any meaning. Athough this rationale for nihilism was prominent in the modern era (and was more or less Camus’ position), it has been on the wane in analytic philosophical circles, as extreme supernaturalism has been eclipsed by the moderate variety.

The most common rationales for nihilism these days do not appeal to supernaturalism, or at least not explicitly. One cluster of ideas appeals to what meta-ethicists call “error theory,” the view that evaluative claims (in this case about meaning in life, or about morality qua necessary for meaning) characteristically posit objectively real or universally justified values, but that such values do not exist. According to one version, value judgments often analytically include a claim to objectivity but there is no reason to think that objective values exist, as they “would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe” (Mackie 1977/1990, 38). According to a second version, life would be meaningless if there were no set of moral standards that could be fully justified to all rational enquirers, but it so happens that such standards cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, 12–17). According to a third, we hold certain beliefs about the objectivity and universality of morality and related values such as meaning because they were evolutionarily advantageous to our ancestors, not because they are true. Humans have been “deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a distinterested, objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey” (Ruse and Wilson 1986, 179; cf. Street 2015). One must draw on the intricate work in meta-ethics that has been underway for the past several decades in order to appraise these arguments.

In contrast to error-theoretic arguments for nihilism, there are rationales for it accepting that objective values exist but denying that our lives can ever exhibit or promote them so as to obtain meaning. One version of this approach maintains that, for our lives to matter, we must be in a position to add objective value to the world, which we are not since the objective value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value remains infinity. One way to question this argument, beyond doubting the value of space-time or stars, is to suggest that, even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly comes from being the source of certain values.

A second rationale for nihilism that accepts the existence of objective value is David Benatar’s (2006, 18–59) intriguing “asymmetry argument” for anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would always be on balance bad for them. For Benatar, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, it follows that existing is always worse compared to not existing. Although this argument is illustrated with experiential goods and bads, it seems generalizable to non-experiential ones, including meaning in life and anti-matter. The literature on this argument has become large (for a recent collection, see Hauskeller and Hallich 2022).

Benatar (2006, 60–92, 2017, 35–63) has advanced an additional argument for nihilism, one that appeals to Thomas Nagel’s (1986, 208–32) widely discussed analysis of the extremely external standpoint that human persons can take on their lives. There exists, to use Henry Sidgwick’s influential phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers a human being’s life in relation to all times and all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one’s puny impact on the world, little of one’s life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over 75 years or so just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of temporal years and billions of light-years that make up space-time. Although this reasoning grants limited kinds of meaning to human beings, from a personal, social, or human perspective, Benatar both denies that the greatest sort of meaning––a cosmic one––is available to them and contends that this makes their lives bad, hence the “nihilist” tag. Some have objected that our lives could in fact have a cosmic significance, say, if they played a role in God’s plan (Quinn 2000, 65–66; Swinburne 2016, 154), were the sole ones with a dignity in the universe (Kahane 2014), or engaged in valuable activities that could be appreciated by anyone anywhere anytime (Wolf 2016, 261–62). Others naturally maintain that cosmic significance is irrelevant to appraising a human life, with some denying that it would be a genuine source of meaning (Landau 2017, 93–99), and others accepting that it would be but maintaining that the absence of this good would not count as a bad or merit regret (discussed in Benatar 2017, 56–62; Williams 2020, 108–11).

Finally, a distinguishable source of nihilism concerns the ontological, as distinct from axiological, preconditions for meaning in life. Perhaps most radically, there are those who deny that we have selves. Do we indeed lack selves, and, if we do, is a meaningful life impossible for us (see essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018; Le Bihan 2019)? Somewhat less radically, there are those who grant that we have selves, but deny that they are in charge in the relevant way. That is, some have argued that we lack self-governance or free will of the sort that is essential for meaning in life, at least if determinism is true (Pisciotta 2013; essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018). Non-quantum events, including human decisions, appear to be necessited by a prior state of the world, such that none could have been otherwise, and many of our decisions are a product of unconscious neurological mechanisms (while quantum events are of course utterly beyond our control). If none of our conscious choices could have been avoided and all were ultimately necessited by something external to them, perhaps they are insufficient to merit pride or admiration or to constitute narrative authorship of a life. In reply, some maintain that a compatibilism between determinism and moral responsibility applies with comparable force to meaning in life (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77), while others contend that incompatibilism is true of moral responsibility but not of meaning (Pereboom 2014).

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Delon, N., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life ”, a bibliography on PhilPapers.
Metz, T., 2021, “ Life, Meaning of ”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , E. Mason (ed.).
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Seachris, J., 2021, “ Meaning of Life: The Analytic Perspective ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).

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11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing

Learning objectives.

Identify reasons to research writing projects.
Outline the steps of the research writing process.

Why was the Great Wall of China built? What have scientists learned about the possibility of life on Mars? What roles did women play in the American Revolution? How does the human brain create, store, and retrieve memories? Who invented the game of football, and how has it changed over the years?

You may know the answers to these questions off the top of your head. If you are like most people, however, you find answers to tough questions like these by searching the Internet, visiting the library, or asking others for information. To put it simply, you perform research.

Whether you are a scientist, an artist, a paralegal, or a parent, you probably perform research in your everyday life. When your boss, your instructor, or a family member asks you a question that you do not know the answer to, you locate relevant information, analyze your findings, and share your results. Locating, analyzing, and sharing information are key steps in the research process, and in this chapter, you will learn more about each step. By developing your research writing skills, you will prepare yourself to answer any question no matter how challenging.

Reasons for Research

When you perform research, you are essentially trying to solve a mystery—you want to know how something works or why something happened. In other words, you want to answer a question that you (and other people) have about the world. This is one of the most basic reasons for performing research.

But the research process does not end when you have solved your mystery. Imagine what would happen if a detective collected enough evidence to solve a criminal case, but she never shared her solution with the authorities. Presenting what you have learned from research can be just as important as performing the research. Research results can be presented in a variety of ways, but one of the most popular—and effective—presentation forms is the research paper . A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources.

If you are curious about the possibility of life on Mars, for example, you might choose to research the topic. What will you do, though, when your research is complete? You will need a way to put your thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner. You may want to use the facts you have learned to create a narrative or to support an argument. And you may want to show the results of your research to your friends, your teachers, or even the editors of magazines and journals. Writing a research paper is an ideal way to organize thoughts, craft narratives or make arguments based on research, and share your newfound knowledge with the world.

Write a paragraph about a time when you used research in your everyday life. Did you look for the cheapest way to travel from Houston to Denver? Did you search for a way to remove gum from the bottom of your shoe? In your paragraph, explain what you wanted to research, how you performed the research, and what you learned as a result.

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

No matter what field of study you are interested in, you will most likely be asked to write a research paper during your academic career. For example, a student in an art history course might write a research paper about an artist’s work. Similarly, a student in a psychology course might write a research paper about current findings in childhood development.

Having to write a research paper may feel intimidating at first. After all, researching and writing a long paper requires a lot of time, effort, and organization. However, writing a research paper can also be a great opportunity to explore a topic that is particularly interesting to you. The research process allows you to gain expertise on a topic of your choice, and the writing process helps you remember what you have learned and understand it on a deeper level.

Research Writing at Work

Knowing how to write a good research paper is a valuable skill that will serve you well throughout your career. Whether you are developing a new product, studying the best way to perform a procedure, or learning about challenges and opportunities in your field of employment, you will use research techniques to guide your exploration. You may even need to create a written report of your findings. And because effective communication is essential to any company, employers seek to hire people who can write clearly and professionally.

Writing at Work

Take a few minutes to think about each of the following careers. How might each of these professionals use researching and research writing skills on the job?

Medical laboratory technician
Small business owner
Information technology professional
Freelance magazine writer

A medical laboratory technician or information technology professional might do research to learn about the latest technological developments in either of these fields. A small business owner might conduct research to learn about the latest trends in his or her industry. A freelance magazine writer may need to research a given topic to write an informed, up-to-date article.

Think about the job of your dreams. How might you use research writing skills to perform that job? Create a list of ways in which strong researching, organizing, writing, and critical thinking skills could help you succeed at your dream job. How might these skills help you obtain that job?

Steps of the Research Writing Process

How does a research paper grow from a folder of brainstormed notes to a polished final draft? No two projects are identical, but most projects follow a series of six basic steps.

These are the steps in the research writing process:

Choose a topic.
Plan and schedule time to research and write.
Conduct research.
Organize research and ideas.
Draft your paper.
Revise and edit your paper.

Each of these steps will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. For now, though, we will take a brief look at what each step involves.

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

As you may recall from Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , to narrow the focus of your topic, you may try freewriting exercises, such as brainstorming. You may also need to ask a specific research question —a broad, open-ended question that will guide your research—as well as propose a possible answer, or a working thesis . You may use your research question and your working thesis to create a research proposal . In a research proposal, you present your main research question, any related subquestions you plan to explore, and your working thesis.

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Before you start researching your topic, take time to plan your researching and writing schedule. Research projects can take days, weeks, or even months to complete. Creating a schedule is a good way to ensure that you do not end up being overwhelmed by all the work you have to do as the deadline approaches.

During this step of the process, it is also a good idea to plan the resources and organizational tools you will use to keep yourself on track throughout the project. Flowcharts, calendars, and checklists can all help you stick to your schedule. See Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , Section 11.2 “Steps in Developing a Research Proposal” for an example of a research schedule.

Step 3: Conducting Research

When going about your research, you will likely use a variety of sources—anything from books and periodicals to video presentations and in-person interviews.

Your sources will include both primary sources and secondary sources . Primary sources provide firsthand information or raw data. For example, surveys, in-person interviews, and historical documents are primary sources. Secondary sources, such as biographies, literary reviews, or magazine articles, include some analysis or interpretation of the information presented. As you conduct research, you will take detailed, careful notes about your discoveries. You will also evaluate the reliability of each source you find.

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

When your research is complete, you will organize your findings and decide which sources to cite in your paper. You will also have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence you have collected and determine whether it supports your thesis, or the focus of your paper. You may decide to adjust your thesis or conduct additional research to ensure that your thesis is well supported.

Remember, your working thesis is not set in stone. You can and should change your working thesis throughout the research writing process if the evidence you find does not support your original thesis. Never try to force evidence to fit your argument. For example, your working thesis is “Mars cannot support life-forms.” Yet, a week into researching your topic, you find an article in the New York Times detailing new findings of bacteria under the Martian surface. Instead of trying to argue that bacteria are not life forms, you might instead alter your thesis to “Mars cannot support complex life-forms.”

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Now you are ready to combine your research findings with your critical analysis of the results in a rough draft. You will incorporate source materials into your paper and discuss each source thoughtfully in relation to your thesis or purpose statement.

When you cite your reference sources, it is important to pay close attention to standard conventions for citing sources in order to avoid plagiarism , or the practice of using someone else’s words without acknowledging the source. Later in this chapter, you will learn how to incorporate sources in your paper and avoid some of the most common pitfalls of attributing information.

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

In the final step of the research writing process, you will revise and polish your paper. You might reorganize your paper’s structure or revise for unity and cohesion, ensuring that each element in your paper flows into the next logically and naturally. You will also make sure that your paper uses an appropriate and consistent tone.

Once you feel confident in the strength of your writing, you will edit your paper for proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and formatting. When you complete this final step, you will have transformed a simple idea or question into a thoroughly researched and well-written paper you can be proud of!

Review the steps of the research writing process. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

In which steps of the research writing process are you allowed to change your thesis?
In step 2, which types of information should you include in your project schedule?
What might happen if you eliminated step 4 from the research writing process?

Key Takeaways

People undertake research projects throughout their academic and professional careers in order to answer specific questions, share their findings with others, increase their understanding of challenging topics, and strengthen their researching, writing, and analytical skills.
The research writing process generally comprises six steps: choosing a topic, scheduling and planning time for research and writing, conducting research, organizing research and ideas, drafting a paper, and revising and editing the paper.

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Sense of Purpose in Life and Subsequent Physical, Behavioral, and Psychosocial Health: An Outcome-Wide Approach

Eric s. kim.

1 Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

2 Human Flourishing Program, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

3 Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

4 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

Julia S. Nakamura

Carol d. ryff.

5 Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

6 Institute on Aging, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

Tyler J. VanderWeele

7 Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

Associated Data

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ahp-10.1177_08901171211038545 for Sense of Purpose in Life and Subsequent Physical, Behavioral, and Psychosocial Health: An Outcome-Wide Approach by Eric S. Kim, Ying Chen, Julia S. Nakamura, Carol D. Ryff and Tyler J. VanderWeele in American Journal of Health Promotion

Growing evidence indicates that a higher sense of purpose in life ( purpose ) is associated with reduced risk of chronic diseases and mortality. However, epidemiological studies have not evaluated if change in purpose is associated with subsequent health and well-being outcomes.

We evaluated if positive change in purpose (between t 0 ; 2006/2008 and t 1 ;2010/2012) was associated with better outcomes on 35 indicators of physical health, health behaviors, and psychosocial well-being (at t 2 ;2014/2016).

We used data from 12,998 participants in the Health and Retirement study—a prospective and nationally representative cohort of U.S. adults aged >50.

We conducted multiple linear-, logistic-, and generalized linear regressions.

Over the 4-year follow-up period, people with the highest (versus lowest) purpose had better subsequent physical health outcomes (e.g., 46% reduced risk of mortality (95% CI [0.44, 0.66])), health behaviors (e.g., 13% reduced risk of sleep problems (95% CI [0.77, 0.99])), and psychosocial outcomes (e.g., higher optimism (β = 0.41, 95% CI [0.35, 0.47]), 43% reduced risk of depression (95% CI [0.46, 0.69]), lower loneliness (β = −0.35, 95% CI [−0.41, −0.29])). Importantly, however, purpose was not associated with other physical health outcomes, health behaviors, and social factors.

Conclusion:

With further research, these results suggest that sense of purpose might be a valuable target for innovative policy and intervention work aimed at improving health and well-being.

Meeting the unique needs of our rapidly growing older adult population throughout the world is considered a next global public health opportunity. 1 For this effort, identifying factors that foster health and well-being is crucial. While much effort has focused on identifying risk factors of disease, investigators are increasingly seeking potentially modifiable health assets that uniquely enhance a person’s ability to foster healthy behaviors and physical health. 2 - 7 A sense of purpose in life is one promising candidate; it is viewed as a central component of well-being and refers to the extent that people see their lives as having meaning, a sense of direction, and goals. 4 , 8 - 12 It is shaped by social structural factors and changing life circumstances, with ongoing work exploring what the determinants of purpose are, 13 - 15 and whether it can be intervened upon, issues to which we return after reporting our findings. 4 , 16 - 19 A growing body of research has also observed that having a higher sense of purpose is associated with better: health behaviors (e.g., increased physical activity, increased preventive healthcare use, healthier sleep, reduced drug misuse), 14 , 20 - 26 biological functioning (e.g., reduced allostatic load, reduced inflammation), 27 - 29 better physical functioning, and reduced risk of disease (e.g., lower risk of cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment), 14 , 29 - 35 and mortality. 31

These pioneering studies have contributed substantially to the literature. Although many newer studies in this area address limitations brought to light by advances in the field of causal inference, many prior studies remain limited in several ways. First, some studies used data from small and specific subpopulations (e.g., college students and patient groups), which may not generalize to older adults or healthy populations. Second, some studies did not adequately account for potential confounders (e.g., baseline health, psychological distress). Third, most longitudinal studies did not control for pre-baseline outcomes, thereby failing to address reverse causality concerns. Fourth, some studies used limited assessments of purpose in life (e.g., single-item measures). Fifth, few, if any, longitudinal studies have controlled for purpose in life in the pre-baseline wave, which allows researchers to ask a slightly different question—how changes in purpose (“incident exposure”) affect health.

In this era of translational research, interventionists and policy makers are seeking answers to a different question that past studies have not addressed. What health and well-being outcomes might we observe if purpose was intervened upon? To begin addressing this question, we used an outcome-wide analytic approach, 36 and performed analyses to examine whether positive change in purpose at baseline was associated with better subsequent health and well-being across 35 separate outcomes (indicators of: physical health, health behaviors, psychological well-being, psychological distress, and social well-being) in a large, prospective, and nationally representative sample of adults aged over 50. These outcomes were chosen because they are frequently included in the conceptualization of key gerontological models that characterize the antecedents, processes, and outcomes that foster people’s ability to age well. 37 - 41 In these analyses we controlled for: the exposure (purpose) in the pre-baseline wave, a robust range of potential confounders, and all outcomes. This helps condition on or remove the potential accumulating effects that past purpose had on health/well-being in the past, thus allowing us to evaluate the effects of change in purpose, and provides better estimates of the outcomes we might expect observe if purpose was intervened upon. To the best of our knowledge, no existing studies in this area have used this approach.

We used data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), an ongoing nationally representative panel study of U.S. adults aged >50, and it surveys participants every 2 years. Starting in 2006, study staff visited a randomly-selected 50% of HRS study participants for an enhanced face-to-face (EFTF) interview. The remaining 50% of participants were assessed in 2008. After the interview, respondents were given a self-administered psychosocial questionnaire, 42 which they completed and returned by mail to the University of Michigan. The response rate for this psychosocial questionnaire was 88% in 2006 and 84% in 2008. 42 To increase our sample size and statistical power, we combined data from both subcohorts. The sample was restricted to individuals who completed the psychosocial questionnaire at baseline because more than half of study outcomes were included in this assessment; this resulted in a final sample size of 12,998.

Our study used data from 3 time points (t 0 , t 1 , and t 2 ). All covariates were assessed in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 , 2006/2008). This choice was made because controlling for potential confounders in the pre-baseline wave helps alleviate the concern as to whether the variable is a confounder or a mediator. The exposure, purpose in life, was then assessed 4 years later in the baseline wave (t 1 , 2010/2012), while all outcomes were subsequently assessed another 4 years later in the outcome wave (t 2 , 2014/2016). The HRS website ( http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu ) provides extensive documentation about the study. Because the present study used de-identified, publicly available data, the ethics board at the University of British Columbia exempted it from review.

Sense of purpose in life

Purpose was assessed at baseline (t 1 ; 2010/2012) using the 7-item purpose in life subscale of the Ryff Psychological Well-Being Scales, 43 previously validated in a nationally representative sample of adults. On a 6-point Likert scale, respondents rated the degree to which they endorsed items such as, “I have a sense of direction and purpose in my life.” The mean of all items was taken to create a scale with scores ranging from 1 to 6 where higher scores reflected higher sense of purpose (Cronbach α = 0.76). Following HRS protocol, if respondents completed 4 or more (of 7 items), a purpose score was derived. To examine threshold effects, we created quartiles based on the baseline distribution of purpose scores in the sample.

Thirty-five outcomes were assessed in the outcome wave (t 2 ; 2014/2016), including: physical health factors (all-cause mortality, number of chronic conditions: diabetes, hypertension, stroke, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, arthritis, overweight/obesity, physical functioning limitations, cognitive impairment, chronic pain, self-rated health), health behaviors (heavy drinking, smoking, physical activity, sleep problems), psychological well-being (positive affect, life satisfaction, optimism, purpose in life, mastery, health mastery, financial mastery), psychological distress (depression, depressive symptoms, hopelessness, negative affect, perceived constraints) and social factors (loneliness, living with a spouse/partner, and contact with: children, other family, and friends). The appendix provides information about how each of these variables were assessed and the following HRS guides provide extensive documentation about each of these measures (see Supplementary Text 1 for further details). 42 , 44 , 45

All covariates were assessed by self-report in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ; 2006/2008, the closest wave pre-baseline to the exposure assessment. Potential confounders included: sociodemographic factors (age, sex, race/ethnicity (Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, Other), marital status (married/not married), income (<$50,000; $50,000-$74,999; $75,000-$99,999; ≥$100,000), total wealth (based on quintiles of the score distribution in this sample), educational attainment (no degree, GED or high school diploma, college degree or higher), employment status (yes/no), health insurance (yes/no), geographic region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West), religious service attendance (none, <1x a week, ≥1x per week), personality factors (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism), and childhood abuse (yes/no). To reduce the possibility of reverse causation, we controlled for pre-baseline values of all outcome variables in our models. 36 The appendix and HRS guides provide information about each of these assessments. To evaluate changes in purpose (conditional on the past), we also controlled for purpose in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ; 2006/2008); doing so helps rule out reverse causation and potential unmeasured confounding. 46

We used an outcome-wide analytic approach, 36 and it contains several features that are not widely used outside of biostatistics and causal inference. Thus, we summarize those features here. First, if we assess potential confounders in the same timepoint as the exposure (t 1 ), it remains unclear if they are confounders or mediators. That is why we adjust for potential confounders in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ). Second, we adjust for a broad array of potential confounders variables because this enhances our ability to strive toward “exchangeability” and “no unmeasured confounding,” which in turn enhances our ability to make causal inference. 47 , 48 Third, we adjust for all outcome variables in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ) to reduce potential reverse causality. Fourth, to evaluate potential “change” in purpose we adjust for purpose in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ). Doing so helps “hold constant” pre-baseline levels of purpose. Therefore, those who have the highest levels of purpose in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ) and continue having the highest levels of purpose in the baseline wave (t 1 ) contribute to the final estimate. However, the estimates produced from this analysis also corresponds to those who started in the lowest levels of purpose in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ) and then moved to the highest levels of purpose in the baseline wave (t 1 ). Thus, readers are able to evaluate how change in purpose (between t 0 and t 1; see Supplementary Table 1 for further details), are associated with subsequent health and well-being outcomes (at t 2; see Supplementary Text 2 for further details). Adjusting for pre-baseline levels of purpose (t 0 ) also has several other advantages including helping reduce risk of reverse causality by “removing” the accumulating effects that purpose already had on outcomes in the past (“prevalent exposure”), and allowing readers to instead focus on the effects of change in purpose (“incident exposure”) on outcomes. In our tables, we marked multiple p-value thresholds because different investigators often use different standards in interpreting evidence. For ease of reviewing results, the tables include p-value thresholds of: p < 0.05, p < 0.01, or a Bonferroni correction to account for multiple testing (p = 0.05/35 outcomes = p < 0.001). In our results section, we comment on traditional 0.05 p-value threshold (without Bonferroni correction), but in all cases we also provide 95% confidence intervals which give what are often considered preferable assessments of uncertainty since all thresholds are ultimately arbitrary.

Additional analyses

We conducted several additional analyses. First, we performed sensitivity analysis using E-values to assess the robustness of an exposure-outcome association to unmeasured confounding by assessing the minimum strength that an unmeasured confounder must have on the risk ratio scale (with both the exposure and the outcome) to explain away the association. 49 Second, we reanalyzed all models using a reduced list of potential confounders which are more conventionally used in the social and behavioral sciences (e.g., sociodemographics factors and depressive symptoms) to evaluate how similar (or different) our results were compared to past research in the purpose-health/well-being area. Third, we reanalyzed the main models, but removed people who had history of a given condition at baseline (e.g., for the stroke analyses, we removed people who had stroke in the past). Fourth, we reanalyzed all models using only complete-cases.

Multiple imputation

When conducting complete-case analyses we had missing data for the exposure (2.85%), covariates (up to 23.73%), and outcomes (up to 38.40%), which ultimately led to a 35.74% to 57.45% drop in sample size, depending on the outcome being evaluated. Thus, we imputed missing data for the exposure, covariates, and outcomes using an imputation by chained equations procedure by generating 5 datasets, as it provides a more flexible approach than other methods of handling missing data. 50 All analyses were conducted in Stata (Version 16.1).

At the pre-baseline wave, when all the potential confounders were assessed, the average age of respondents was 65 years old ( SD = 10), primarily women (59%), and tended to have a high school education (55%). Participants also reported being White (74%), Black (14%), Hispanic (9%), and “Other” (3%). The distribution of sociodemographic and health characteristics was similar across purpose quartiles, but there were some key differences. For example, those in the highest (versus lowest) purpose quartile were more educated (e.g., 35% versus 19% with ≥college degree) and had a lower prevalence of smoking (e.g., 9% vs. 15% were current smokers) and depression (e.g., 5% versus 25%). Table 1 describes the distribution of covariates by quartile of purpose for the other variables.

Characteristics of Participants at Baseline by Quartiles of Sense of Purpose in Life (N = 9,977). a,b,c

Participant characteristics	Purpose in life
	Quartile 1 ( = 2,706)				Quartile 2 ( = 2,443)				Quartile 3 ( = 2,723)				Quartile 4 ( = 2,105)
	n	%	M	SD	n	%	M	SD	n	%	M	SD	n	%	M	SD
Sociodemographic Factors
Age (yr; range: 46-96)			68.0	9.7			67.4	9.2			66.8	8.9			65.8	8.7
Female (%)	1617	59.8			1465	60.0			1611	59.2			1264	60.1
Race/Ethnicity (%)
White	2091	77.3			1969	80.6			2236	82.2			1626	77.2
Black	280	10.4			262	10.7			270	9.9			298	14.2
Hispanic	262	9.7			163	6.7			170	6.3			135	6.4
Other	73	2.7			49	2.0			46	1.7			46	2.2
Married (%)	1642	60.7			1614	66.1			1926	70.7			1518	72.2
Income (%)
<$50,000	1847	68.3			1419	58.1			1344	49.4			955	45.4
$50,000-$74,999	395	14.6			396	16.2			522	19.2			339	16.1
$75,000-$99,999	200	7.4			227	9.3			312	11.5			256	12.2
≥$100,000	264	9.8			401	16.4			545	20.0			555	26.4
Total Wealth (%)
1st Quintile	737	27.2			485	19.9			423	15.5			281	13.4
2nd Quintile	629	23.2			502	20.6			494	18.1			367	17.4
3 rd Quintile	525	19.4			496	20.3			552	20.3			415	19.7
4th Quintile	441	16.3			479	19.6			622	22.8			494	23.5
5th Quintile	374	13.8			481	19.7			632	23.2			548	26.0
Education (%)
< High School	640	23.7			380	15.6			326	12.0			228	10.9
High School	1549	57.3			1407	57.7			1513	55.8			1127	53.7
≥ College	513	19.0			651	26.7			873	32.2			742	35.4
Employed (%)	872	32.3			968	39.6			1192	43.8			1064	50.6
Health insurance (%)	2552	94.4			2336	95.6			2609	95.8			2012	95.6
Geographic region (%)
Northeast	444	16.4			335	13.7			374	13.7			297	14.1
Midwest	747	27.6			721	29.6			732	26.9			565	26.8
South	1020	37.7			914	37.5			1083	39.8			836	39.7
West	495	18.3			470	19.3			532	19.6			407	19.3
Childhood abuse (%)	218	8.1			181	7.5			155	5.7			125	6.0

Diabetes (%)	631	23.4			437	17.9			411	15.1			273	13.0
Hypertension (%)	1592	58.9			1328	54.4			1387	51.0			1034	49.1
Stroke (%)	211	7.8			139	5.7			137	5.0			88	4.2
Cancer (%)	379	14.1			332	13.6			383	14.1			264	12.6
Heart Disease (%)	665	24.6			496	20.3			527	19.4			339	16.1
Lung Disease (%)	279	10.3			215	8.8			182	6.7			96	4.6
Arthritis (%)	1737	64.2			1417	58.0			1511	55.6			1101	52.4
Overweight/Obesity (%)	2008	75.2			1722	71.2			1929	71.6			1469	70.6
Physical limitations (%)	808	29.9			487	19.9			371	13.6			236	11.2
Cognitive impairment (%)	554	20.7			316	13.0			275	10.2			190	9.1
Chronic pain (%)	1136	42.0			826	33.8			834	30.6			527	25.0
Self-rated health (range: 1-5)			2.9	1.0			3.3	1.0			3.5	1.0			3.7	0.9

Heavy drinking (%)	174	7.9			141	7.2			165	7.5			126	7.4
Smoking (%)	400	14.9			325	13.4			278	10.3			194	9.3
Frequent physical activity (%)	1780	65.9			1858	76.1			2210	81.2			1802	85.6
Sleep problems (%)	780	50.4			562	41.0			539	37.0			325	32.3
Religious service attendance (%)
Never	768	28.4			569	23.3			600	22.1			423	20.1
<1x/week	891	33.0			838	34.3			807	29.7			655	31.1
≥1x/week	1045	38.7			1034	42.4			1314	48.3			1027	48.8

Positive affect (range: 1-5)			3.1	0.8			3.5	0.6			3.8	0.6			4.1	0.6
Life satisfaction (range: 1-7)			4.4	1.5			5.1	1.3			5.4	1.3			5.7	1.3
Optimism (range: 1-6)			3.9	0.9			4.4	0.9			4.8	0.9			5.1	0.8
Purpose in life (range: 1-6)			3.5	0.5			4.4	0.2			5.1	0.2			5.8	0.2
Mastery (range: 1-6)			4.3	1.1			4.7	1.0			5.1	1.0			5.3	0.9
Health mastery (range: 1-10)			6.5	2.5			7.3	2.2			7.8	1.9			8.3	1.8
Financial mastery (range: 1-10)			6.6	2.9			7.2	2.5			7.8	2.2			8.2	2.1

Depression (%)	676	25.0			279	11.4			202	7.4			106	5.0
Depressive symptoms (range: 0-8)			2.1	2.3			1.2	1.8			0.9	1.4			0.6	1.2
Hopelessness (range: 1-6)			3.2	1.3			2.4	1.1			1.9	1.0			1.6	0.8
Negative affect (range: 1-5)			2.0	0.7			1.7	0.6			1.5	0.5			1.4	0.4
Perceived constraints (range: 1-6)			2.8	1.2			2.2	1.1			1.8	0.9			1.5	0.8

Loneliness (range: 1-3)			1.7	0.6			1.5	0.5			1.3	0.4			1.2	0.4
Not living with spouse/partner (%)		959	36.6			720	30.1			681	25.6			508	24.6
Contact children <1x/week (%)		742	28.1			578	24.2			620	23.3			471	22.8
Contact other family <1x/week (%)		1325	50.0			1145	47.7			1304	48.6			933	44.9
Contact friends <1x/week (%)		1151	43.1			830	34.4			873	32.3			516	24.8

Openness (range: 1-4)	2.7	0.5			2.9	0.5			3.1	0.5			3.2	0.5
Conscientiousness (range: 1-4)	3.1	0.5			3.3	0.4			3.5	0.4			3.6	0.3
Extroversion (range: 1-4)	2.9	0.6			3.2	0.5			3.3	0.5			3.5	0.4
Agreeableness (range: 1-4)	3.3	0.5			3.5	0.4			3.6	0.4			3.7	0.4
Neuroticism (range: 1-4)	2.3	0.6			2.1	0.6			1.9	0.5			1.8	0.5

a This table was created based on non-imputed data. This is why Table 1 ‘ s sample size is smaller than the multiply imputed estimates in the other tables.

b All of these variables were used as covariates, and assessed in the pre-baseline wave (t 0 ; 2006/2008).

c The percentages in some sections may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Over the 4-year follow-up period participants in the highest (versus lowest) purpose quartile had 46% reduced risk of mortality (95% CI [0.44, 0.66]; Table 2 ), 23% reduced risk of stroke (95% CI [0.62, 0.95]), 17% reduced risk of lung disease (95% CI [0.70, 0.98]), 28% reduced risk of physical functioning limitations (95% CI [0.64, 0.81]), and 16% reduced risk of cognitive impairment (95% CI [0.74, 0.96]), conditional on pre-baseline purpose. They also had fewer chronic conditions (β = −0.08, 95% CI [−0.12, −0.04]) and higher self-rated health (β = 0.17, 95% CI [0.10, 0.23]). However, there was little or no evidence of association between purpose and a range of other physical health outcomes including: diabetes, hypertension, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, overweight/obesity, or chronic pain.

Sense of Purpose in Life and Subsequent Health and Well-Being (Health and Retirement Study [HRS]: N = 12,998). a,b,c,d

Participant characteristics	Purpose in life
	Quartile 1 ( = 3,335)	Quartile 2 ( = 3,670)		Quartile 3 ( = 2,750)		Quartile 4 ( = 3,243)
	(Reference)	RR/OR/β	95% CI	RR/OR/β	95% CI	RR/OR/β	95% CI

All-cause mortality	1.00	0.81	0.71, 0.94**	0.74	0.62, 0.89***	0.54	0.44, 0.66***
Number of chronic conditions	0.00	−0.05	−0.08, −0.01**	−0.07	−0.10, −0.03***	−0.08	−0.12, −0.04***
Diabetes	1.00	1.01	0.92, 1.10	0.95	0.85, 1.07	0.97	0.87, 1.09
Hypertension	1.00	0.99	0.93, 1.05	1.00	0.94, 1.08	1.01	0.94, 1.09
Stroke	1.00	0.93	0.81, 1.07	0.79	0.66, 0.94*	0.77	0.62, 0.95*
Cancer	1.00	0.98	0.88, 1.10	1.00	0.86, 1.15	0.95	0.82, 1.11
Heart disease	1.00	0.96	0.88, 1.05	1.00	0.91, 1.11	0.94	0.84, 1.05
Lung disease	1.00	0.92	0.80, 1.05	0.85	0.72, 1.00*	0.83	0.70, 0.98*
Arthritis	1.00	0.98	0.92, 1.04	0.98	0.92, 1.05	0.98	0.91, 1.06
Overweight/obesity	1.00	1.00	0.94, 1.07	0.98	0.91, 1.05	0.97	0.90, 1.04
Physical limitations	1.00	0.89	0.82, 0.97**	0.80	0.72, 0.89***	0.72	0.64, 0.81***
Cognitive impairment	1.00	0.95	0.86, 1.05	0.92	0.82, 1.02	0.84	0.74, 0.96*
Chronic pain	1.00	1.00	0.93, 1.08	0.98	0.88, 1.10	0.94	0.85, 1.05
Self-rated health	0.00	0.09	0.04, 0.14***	0.13	0.07, 0.19***	0.17	0.10, 0.23***

Heavy drinking	1.00	1.02	0.80, 1.31	0.99	0.73,1.33	1.03	0.76, 1.41
Current smoking	1.00	1.09	0.82, 1.44	0.98	0.66, 1.45	1.18	0.78, 1.79
Frequent physical activity	1.00	1.10	1.02, 1.18**	1.15	1.05, 1.25**	1.15	1.05, 1.25**
Sleep problems	1.00	0.95	0.88, 1.03	0.92	0.83, 1.02	0.87	0.77, 0.99 *

Positive affect	0.00	0.25	0.20, 0.29***	0.38	0.33, 0.43***	0.59	0.53, 0.65***
Life satisfaction	0.00	0.15	0.10, 0.20***	0.21	0.15, 0.27***	0.31	0.24, 0.38***
Optimism	0.00	0.17	0.13, 0.21***	0.31	0.24, 0.37***	0.41	0.35, 0.47***
Purpose in life	0.00	0.38	0.34, 0.42***	0.63	0.58, 0.68***	0.92	0.86, 0.98***
Mastery	0.00	0.19	0.14, 0.25***	0.31	0.24, 0.38***	0.44	0.36, 0.53***
Health mastery	0.00	0.15	0.07, 0.22**	0.23	0.15, 0.31***	0.32	0.22, 0.42***
Financial mastery	0.00	0.15	0.10, 0.21***	0.22	0.15, 0.28***	0.32	0.25, 0.40***

Depression	1.00	0.85	0.75, 0.97*	0.68	0.57, 0.82***	0.57	0.46, 0.69***
Depressive symptoms	0.00	−0.17	−0.22, −0.12***	−0.24	−0.30, −0.19***	−0.27	−0.32, −0.21***
Hopelessness	0.00	−0.24	−0.31, −0.18***	−0.34	−0.43, −0.25***	−0.45	−0.56, −0.35***
Negative affect	0.00	−0.13	−0.19, −0.07***	−0.20	−0.28, −0.12***	−0.30	−0.39, −0.21***
Perceived constraints	0.00	−0.19	−0.26, −0.12***	−0.31	−0.40, −0.22***	−0.41	−0.51, −0.31***

Loneliness	0.00	−0.17	−0.22, −0.12***	−0.23	−0.31, −0.16***	−0.35	−0.41, −0.29***
Not living with spouse/partner	1.00	1.00	0.92, 1.08	0.97	0.89, 1.07	0.93	0.84, 1.02
Contact children <1x/week	1.00	0.97	0.87, 1.09	0.91	0.81, 1.03	0.93	0.82, 1.07
Contact other family <1x/week	1.00	0.98	0.90, 1.06	0.99	0.89, 1.11	0.97	0.86, 1.08
Contact friends <1x/week	1.00	0.89	0.82, 0.97*	0.86	0.76, 0.96**	0.80	0.71, 0.90***

Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ratio; RR, risk ratio.

* p < 0.05 before Bonferroni correction; **p < 0.01 before Bonferroni correction; ***p < 0.05 after Bonferroni correction (the p-value cutoff for Bonferroni correction is p = 0.05/35 outcomes = p < 0.001).

a If the reference value is “1,” the effect estimate is OR or RR; if the reference value is “0”, the effect estimate is β.

b The analytic sample was restricted to those who had participated in the baseline wave (t 1 ;2010 or 2012). Multiple imputation was performed to impute missing data on the exposure, covariates, and outcomes. All models controlled for pre-baseline sociodemographic characteristics (age, sex, race/ethnicity, marital status, annual household income, total wealth, level of education, employment status, health insurance, geographic region), pre-baseline childhood abuse, pre-baseline religious service attendance, pre-baseline values of the outcome variables (diabetes, hypertension, stroke, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, arthritis, overweight/obesity, physical functioning limitations, cognitive impairment, chronic pain, self-rated health, binge drinking, current smoking status, physical activity, sleep problems, positive affect, life satisfaction, optimism, purpose in life, mastery, health mastery, financial mastery, depressive symptoms, hopelessness, negative affect, perceived constraints, loneliness, living with spouse/partner, contact children <1x/week, contact other family <1x/week, contact friends <1x/week), personality factors (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and the pre-baseline value of the exposure. These variables were controlled for in the pre-baseline wave (in t 0 ; 2006 or 2008).

c We used an outcome-wide analytic approach, and ran a separate model for each outcome. We also ran a different type of model depending on the nature of the outcome: 1) for each binary outcome with a prevalence of ≥10%, we ran a generalized linear model with a log link and Poisson distribution to estimate a R.R.; 2) for each binary outcome with a prevalence of <10%, we ran a logistic regression model to estimate an OR; and 3) for each continuous outcome, we ran a linear regression model to estimate a β.

d All continuous outcomes were standardized (mean = 0; standard deviation = 1), and β was the standardized effect size.

When considering health behaviors, participants in the highest (versus lowest) purpose quartile had 15% increased likelihood of subsequent engagement in frequent physical activity (95% CI [1.05, 1.25]) and 13% reduced risk of sleep problems (95% CI [0.77, 0.99]), conditional on pre-baseline purpose. However, purpose was not substantially associated with either heavy drinking or smoking.

Additionally, purpose was associated with all psychological well-being and psychological distress factors. For example, those in the highest (versus lowest) purpose quartile subsequently reported higher positive affect (β = 0.59, 95% CI [0.53, 0.65]) and optimism (β = 0.41, 95% CI [0.35, 0.47]), as well as a lower sense of hopelessness (β = −0.45, 95% CI [−0.56, −0.35]) conditional on pre-baseline purpose, also had a 43% (95% CI [0.46, 0.69]) reduced risk of depression.

Finally, purpose was associated with some social factors. Those in the highest (versus lowest) purpose quartile had lower loneliness (β = −0.35, 95% CI [−0.41, −0.29]) and a 20% lower likelihood of infrequent contact with friends (95% CI = 0.71, 0.90), conditional on pre-baseline purpose. However, there was little or no evidence of associations between purpose and other social factors (living with a spouse/partner, contact with: children, other family).

We also conducted 4 additional analyses. First, E-value analyses suggested that several associations we observed were at least moderately robust to unmeasured confounding ( Table 3 ) For example, an unmeasured confounder associated with both purpose and stroke by risk ratios of 1.93, each, above and beyond the large array of potential confounders already adjusted for, could explain away the association, but weaker confounding could not; to shift the confidence interval to include the null, an unmeasured confounder associated with both purpose and stroke by risk ratios of 1.29 each could suffice, but weaker confounding could not. Second, conventionally-adjusted covariate models showed estimates that were stronger than the fully-adjusted models and in line with past research (Supplementary Table 2). Third, when reanalyzing the fully-adjusted models after removing anyone with history of a given condition at baseline, estimates were generally stronger (Supplementary Table 2). Fourth, complete-cases analyses provided similar results to the results in the main analyses (Supplementary Table 3).

Robustness to Unmeasured Confounding (E-Values) for the Associations Between Sense of Purpose in Life (4th Quartile vs. 1st Quartile) and Subsequent Health and Well-Being (N = 12,998). a, b, c

	Effect estimate	Confidence interval limit

All-cause mortality	3.13	2.41
Number of chronic conditions	1.36	1.23
Diabetes	1.19	1.00
Hypertension	1.11	1.00
Stroke	1.93	1.29
Cancer	1.28	1.00
Heart disease	1.33	1.00
Lung disease	1.71	1.16
Arthritis	1.17	1.00
Overweight/obesity	1.21	1.00
Physical limitations	2.13	1.77
Cognitive impairment	1.66	1.24
Chronic pain	1.31	1.00
Self-rated health	1.60	1.43

Heavy drinking	1.22	1.00
Current smoking	1.64	1.00
Frequent physical activity	1.56	1.29
Sleep problems	1.55	1.11

Positive affect	2.81	2.63
Life satisfaction	1.98	1.80
Optimism	2.26	2.09
Purpose in life	4.03	3.80
Mastery	2.36	2.14
Health mastery	2.01	1.77
Financial mastery	2.02	1.83

Depression	2.93	2.25
Depressive symptoms	1.87	1.73
Hopelessness	2.39	2.13
Negative affect	1.95	1.74
Perceived constraints	2.26	2.03

Loneliness	2.10	1.93
Not living with spouse/partner	1.37	1.00
Contact children <1x/week	1.35	1.00
Contact other family <1x/week	1.23	1.00
Contact friends <1x/week	1.83	1.47

a See VanderWeele and Ding (2017) 27 for the formula for calculating E-values.

b The E-values for effect estimates are the minimum strength of association on the risk ratio scale that an unmeasured confounder would need to have with both the exposure and the outcome to fully explain away the observed association between the exposure and outcome, conditional on the measured covariates.

c The E-values for the limit of the 95% confidence interval (CI) closest to the null denote the minimum strength of association on the risk ratio scale that an unmeasured confounder would need to have with both the exposure and the outcome to shift the confidence interval to include the null value, conditional on the measured covariates.

Summary of Findings

In a prospective and nationally representative sample of U.S. adults aged >50, we observed that people in the highest (versus lowest) purpose quartile, even conditional on pre-baseline purpose had better subsequent: physical health (e.g., reduced risk of: stroke, lung disease, mortality, physical functioning limitations, cognitive impairment; lower number of chronic conditions; and higher self-rated health), behavioral health (e.g., higher physical activity and reduced sleep problems), and psychosocial health (e.g., higher life satisfaction, lower negative affect, and more frequent contact with friends) over the 4-year follow-up period. Our results were maintained after controlling for a robust array of potential confounders including sociodemographic, physical health, behavioral, psychological, and social factors—as well control for purpose, and all outcomes, in the pre-baseline wave. Importantly, we also observed that purpose was not associated with a broad range of other physical- (e.g., cancer, diabetes), behavioral- (e.g., smoking), and social-health (e.g., contact with children) outcomes.

Results in the context of past research

By controlling for purpose in the pre-baseline wave, we evaluated changes in purpose (conditional on the past), and this “excludes” the potential accumulating effects that past purpose has on health over the life course. From a public health or intervention perspective, this is the analysis that is of more relevance. Our results build upon and converge with past work that has evaluated associations between the “prevalence” of purpose with health and well-being outcomes. For example, we observed that higher purpose was associated with better psychosocial health outcomes and health behaviors (e.g., higher physical activity and reduced sleep problems), 23 , 24 , 51 , 52 as well as reduced risk of disease (e.g., stroke), 33 , 53 and mortality. 31 However, some of our results diverged from some past prevalence of purpose studies and the underlying reasons may stem from a variety of sources including differences in: (a) measurement and specific operationalization of the outcome, (b) measurement of the exposure, (c) sample, (d) covariate control, and (e) control for pre-baseline purpose. However, when controlling for only conventional covariates in secondary analyses (Supplementary Table 2), many of these initially diverging results then in fact converged with past results, suggesting that modeling is a core reason for potential discrepancies.

We also observed that purpose was not associated with a range of other outcomes (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, overweight/obesity, chronic pain, heavy drinking, and smoking). The underlying reasons for associations with some outcomes but not others are unclear; thus, further examination of mechanisms and other explanatory factors is important. Of note, we were only able to consider 4 years of follow-up data and this may not be enough time for a psychological variable to exert cumulative effects on chronic conditions. Further, it remains unclear why purpose was associated with some, but not other, health behaviors. One potential hypothesis is that some subgroups of people with high purpose may cope with the stress of striving toward an overarching goal by engaging in unhealthy behaviors if maintaining health is not a core element of their purpose (e.g., people engaging in unhealthy eating or other unhealthy behaviors to cope with the high stress invoked by pursuing their purpose), while other subgroups may abstain from unhealthy behaviors because it hinders them from achieving an overarching goal where it is important to maintain health (e.g., grandparents wanting to remain healthy and see their grandchildren graduate college). Thus, such possible heterogenous effects, may cancel each other out. Our results could have been influenced (moderated) by numerous other factors such as age, socioeconomic status, employment/retirement status, content of one’s purpose, cohort effects. Thus, future work should formally evaluate these potential moderators of purpose and health/well-being associations. 54

With regard to mechanisms, past research has documented that higher purpose is associated with increased physical activity and decreased sleep problems. 20 , 23 , 24 , 26 , 51 This association may be explained by the fact that people with higher purpose differ on a number of processes including enhanced ability to emotionally recover from negative stimuli, 55 , 56 increased ability to handle daily stressors, 57 decreased impulsivity, 58 enhanced self-efficacy, 52 and decreased neural conflict when making healthy decisions. 59 Future research should expand the range of health behaviors considered, and use more objective and precise instruments to assess each behavior. Past studies have also shown that higher purpose is associated with increased use of preventive healthcare use, 25 and this may be another potential pathway to health. In our results, we observed that higher purpose was associated with higher psychological well-being, lower psychological distress, and higher social well-being. These psychosocial factors in turn, have been associated with enhanced health and reduced risk of mortality, 2 thereby serving as potential mechanisms. Other work evaluating potential biological pathways show that those with higher purpose display healthier regulation of physiological systems including healthier lipid profiles and reduced allostatic load. 27 - 29 Thus, the purpose-health association may be explained in part by a direct effect on biological function.

Limitations and Strengths

Self-report bias is a possibility as all outcomes were self-reported. However, study participants were unaware of this study’s hypotheses when completing the HRS survey and purpose was reported pre-baseline prior to the assessment of outcomes. Future studies could re-evaluate these findings using objectively assessed physical health and health behavior outcomes, beyond mortality, to address this limitation. Four years of follow-up data were available and may not be long enough for a psychological factor to exert influence on chronic diseases. Thus, future research could evaluate these associations with datasets with longer follow-up times. Confounding by unmeasured third variables is a limitation. However, the prospective nature of the data, and robust covariate control, helps mitigate these potential concerns; further E-value analyses that assessed robustness to unmeasured confounding suggested that several of our observed associations were at least moderately robust to potential unmeasured confounding. Our study also has considerable strengths including the use of a large, diverse, prospective, and nationally representative sample of U.S. adults aged over 50. We also adjusted for pre-baseline values of the exposures, covariates, and outcomes, allowing us to evaluate “incident exposure” rather than “prevalent exposure,” which provides stronger evidence of causality. 46 Another advantage of this approach is that from a broader meta-science perspective, it is difficult to publish null results; but by examining many associations simultaneously it is possible to provide evidence for the outcomes that purpose appears to change, and also for those that it does not. 36

Conclusions

As the number of older adults in our society rapidly increases, comprehensive and multidisciplinary efforts will be needed to meet the unique demands of this growing population, including policy changes and intervention strategies designed to promote good physical, behavioral, psychological, and social health. Early randomized controlled trials, ranging from volunteering to group cognitive behavioral therapy, have explored whether a sense of purpose can potentially be altered, but further work is needed to continue documenting the effectiveness of these interventions. 4 , 16 - 19 Replication of the present findings is also needed to not only document the impact of purpose in life on multiple health outcomes assessed longitudinally, but also to bolster evidence for further development of purpose interventions. Recognizing the need for additional work in these multiple areas could pave the way for wider public policies and practices to promote purpose in life as a novel way of improving well-being and health among our rapidly aging population.

What is already known on this topic?

Growing evidence indicates that a higher sense of purpose in life ( purpose ) is associated with reduced risk of chronic diseases and mortality.

What does this article add?

However, epidemiological studies have not evaluated if change in purpose is associated with subsequent health and well-being outcomes. We evaluated if positive change in purpose was associated with better outcomes on 35 indicators of physical health, health behaviors, and psychosocial well-being over time.

What are the implications for health promotion practice or research?

With further research, these results suggest that purpose in life might be a valuable target for innovative policy and intervention work aimed at improving health and well-being.

Supplemental Material

Acknowledgments.

We would like to acknowledge and thank the Health and Retirement Study, which is conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, with grants from the National Institute on Aging (U01AG09740) and the Social Security Administration. We would also like to thank Caitlyn Wilson, Esther Choi, and Sakshi Sahakari for their contributions to this manuscript.

Authors’ Note: Carol D. Ryff, PhD, and Tyler J. VanderWeele, PhD, share senior authorship. All authors made a substantial contribution to the concept and design of the work. All authors helped analysis and interpretation of data; Eric Kim drafted the article and All Authors revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors approved the final version to be published. This study used de-identified and publicly available data; therefore, the University of British Columbia’s ethical review board exempted it from human subject’s review. All study participants provided consent upon entry into the study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Eric S. Kim has worked as a consultant with AARP and UnitedHealth Group which may be affected by the research reported in the enclosed paper. Tyler VanderWeele has worked as a consultant with Aetna Inc.

Funding: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging [grant number K99AG055696]; the John Templeton Foundation [grant number 60175]; and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.

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Supplemental Material: Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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Home › Brain News

Lacking purpose later in life could signal cognitive decline

By StudyFinds Staff

Reviewed by Steve Fink

Research led by Jie Guo, Karolinska Institutet

Aug 14, 2024

(Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels)

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — In the quest to unlock the mysteries of aging, scientists have stumbled upon an unexpected oracle of cognitive health: your own sense of purpose. A new study suggests that the whispers of impending cognitive decline may be heard not in brain scans or memory tests but in the quiet musings of our inner selves.

Published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry , this eye-opening research reveals that changes in psychological well-being could be signaling the approach of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and potentially dementia years before traditional symptoms emerge .

The study, conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Rush University in Chicago, followed over 900 older adults for up to 14 years as part of the Rush Memory and Aging Project. Their findings paint a compelling picture of how our inner lives may forecast our cognitive futures.

The research assessed six key components of psychological well-being: self-acceptance, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, positive relations with others, and personal growth. Intriguingly, two specific aspects showed the earliest and most significant declines.

“Our findings indicate that personal growth and purpose in life may be more cognitively demanding than other components of wellbeing, and therefore may serve as more sensitive indicators of cognitive aging,” the researchers write in a media release.

These declines were noticeable three to six years before MCI diagnosis, even in the absence of evident cognitive symptoms. This revelation adds a new dimension to our understanding of cognitive health. While previous research has linked psychological well-being to brain aging, much of it focused solely on a sense of purpose. This study broadens the scope, suggesting that our feelings about personal growth and life direction could be powerful predictors of cognitive health.

The study found that psychological well-being declined more rapidly in individuals who went on to develop MCI compared to those who remained cognitively healthy. This decline was detectable up to two years before an MCI diagnosis.

However, the story doesn’t end with a diagnosis. The study also found that after an MCI diagnosis, positive relations with others declined more rapidly.

“People with impaired cognitive function may be less likely to engage in social and leisure activities than they were previously, which can cause further deterioration in their relationships with friends or others,” the researchers add.

This finding highlights the critical need for social support and intervention after diagnosis. The researchers advocate that psychological support should be part of the treatment plan for people diagnosed with dementia-related disorders .

While these results are compelling, the researchers acknowledge limitations. The study population was primarily well-educated, White, and female, potentially limiting its generalizability. Additionally, the exact mechanisms linking psychological well-being and cognitive function remain unclear.

Nevertheless, this research opens up exciting possibilities for early intervention and prevention strategies. It suggests that nurturing a sense of purpose and continued personal growth throughout life may not only contribute to emotional well-being but could also play a crucial role in maintaining cognitive function as we age.

As our global population continues to age, with dementia cases projected to triple by 2050 , insights like these become increasingly valuable. They offer new avenues for early detection and intervention, potentially reducing the personal and societal burden of dementia.

The message is clear: cultivating a strong sense of purpose , embracing personal growth, and maintaining social connections may be more than just keys to a satisfying life – they could also be vital components of cognitive health in our later years.

Paper Summary

Methodology.

The Rush Memory and Aging Project, which formed the basis of this study, followed 910 cognitively healthy older adults for up to 14 years. Participants underwent annual assessments that included neurological examinations, cognitive tests, medical history reviews, and psychological well-being evaluations using Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Well-Being. Researchers employed statistical models to analyze how psychological well-being changed over time, comparing those who developed MCI or dementia to those who remained cognitively healthy.

Key Results

The results revealed that psychological well-being declined faster in individuals who developed MCI compared to those who remained cognitively healthy, with lower levels of well-being detectable 2 years before MCI diagnosis. Purpose in life and personal growth showed the earliest declines, becoming significantly lower 3 and 6 years before MCI diagnosis, respectively. After MCI diagnosis, positive relations with others declined more rapidly. Interestingly, among those with MCI, well-being trajectories were similar regardless of whether they later developed dementia.

Study Limitations

While the study’s findings are significant, there are several limitations to consider. The study population was primarily well-educated volunteers, potentially limiting generalizability. The psychological well-being assessment used a shortened version of a more comprehensive scale, which may have introduced some measurement errors. Statistical power was limited for some time points due to fewer observations, and the effect sizes, while statistically significant, were modest.

Discussion & Takeaways

Key takeaways from the study suggest that changes in psychological well-being, particularly in purpose in life and personal growth, may serve as early indicators of future cognitive decline. Maintaining psychological well-being throughout life could potentially help prevent or delay cognitive impairment.

The research also highlights the importance of post-diagnostic psychological support for individuals with MCI or dementia, especially in maintaining social relationships. Future research should explore whether interventions targeting psychological well-being can slow cognitive decline or reduce dementia risk.

Funding & Disclosures

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare, and the Karolinska Institutet Research Foundation. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

About StudyFinds Staff

StudyFinds sets out to find new research that speaks to mass audiences — without all the scientific jargon. The stories we publish are digestible, summarized versions of research that are intended to inform the reader as well as stir civil, educated debate. StudyFinds Staff articles are AI assisted, but always thoroughly reviewed and edited by a Study Finds staff member. Read our AI Policy for more information.

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StudyFinds publishes digestible, agenda-free, transparent research summaries that are intended to inform the reader as well as stir civil, educated debate. We do not agree nor disagree with any of the studies we post, rather, we encourage our readers to debate the veracity of the findings themselves. All articles published on StudyFinds are vetted by our editors prior to publication and include links back to the source or corresponding journal article, if possible.

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What's Your Purpose? Finding A Sense Of Meaning In Life Is Linked To Health

Mara Gordon

Having a purpose in life, whether building guitars or swimming or volunteer work, affects your health, researchers found. It even appeared to be more important for decreasing risk of death than exercising regularly. Dean Mitchell/Getty Images hide caption

Having a purpose in life may decrease your risk of dying early, according to a study published Friday.

Researchers analyzed data from nearly 7,000 American adults between the ages of 51 and 61 who filled out psychological questionnaires on the relationship between mortality and life purpose.

What they found shocked them, according to Celeste Leigh Pearce, one of the authors of the study published in JAMA Current Open .

People who didn't have a strong life purpose — which was defined as "a self-organizing life aim that stimulates goals" — were more likely to die than those who did, and specifically more likely to die of cardiovascular diseases.

"I approached this with a very skeptical eye," says Pearce , an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan. "I just find it so convincing that I'm developing a whole research program around it."

People without a strong life purpose were more than twice as likely to die between the study years of 2006 and 2010, compared with those who had one.

This association between a low level of purpose in life and death remained true despite how rich or poor participants were, and regardless of gender, race, or education level. The researchers also found the association to be so powerful that having a life purpose appeared to be more important for decreasing risk of death than drinking, smoking or exercising regularly.

"Just like people have basic physical needs, like to sleep and eat and drink, they have basic psychological needs," says Alan Rozanski , a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who was not involved in this research but has studied the relationship between life purpose and physical health.

"The need for meaning and purpose is No. 1," Rozanski adds. "It's the deepest driver of well-being there is."

The new study adds to a small but growing body of literature on the relationship between life purpose and physical health. Rozanski published a 2016 paper in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine , for example, that used data from 10 studies to show that strong life purpose was associated with reduced risk of mortality and cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks or stroke.

Study authors for the new JAMA Current Open study pulled data from a large survey of older American adults called the Health and Retirement Study . Participants were asked a variety of questions on topics such as finances, physical health and family life.

A subset of participants filled out psychological questionnaires, including a survey called the Psychological Wellbeing Scale , in 2006. This includes questions designed to understand how strong a person's sense of life purpose is. For example, it asks them to rate their responses to questions like, "Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them."

The study authors used people's answers to these questions to quantify how powerful their degree of life purpose was. The researchers then compared that information to data on participants' physical health up until 2010, including whether or not participants died and what they died from.

The survey didn't ask participants to define how they find meaning in life. What matters, according to the researchers, is not exactly what a person's life purpose is, but that they have one.

"For some, it might be raising children. For others, it might be doing volunteer work," Pearce says. "Where your life fulfillment comes from can be very individual."

The study's lead author, Aliya Alimujiang , who is a doctoral student in epidemiology at the University of Michigan, says she got involved in the project because of a personal interest in mindfulness and wellness.

Before she started graduate school, Alimujiang worked as a volunteer in a breast cancer clinic and says she was struck by how the patients who could articulate how they found meaning in life seemed to do better.

That experience helped her define part of her own life purpose: researching the phenomenon.

"I had a really close relationship with the breast cancer patients. I saw the fear and anxiety and depression they had," Alimujiang says. "That helped me to apply for [graduate] school. That's how I started my career."

Pearce says that while the link between life purpose and physical well-being seems strong, more research is needed to explore the physiological connection between the two, like whether having a low life purpose is connected to high levels of stress hormones. She also hopes to study public health strategies — like types of therapy or educational tools — that might help people develop a strong sense of their life's work.

"What I'm really struck by is the strength of our findings, as well as the consistency in the literature overall," Pearce says. "It seems quite convincing."

life purpose

Title Page Setup

A title page is required for all APA Style papers. There are both student and professional versions of the title page. Students should use the student version of the title page unless their instructor or institution has requested they use the professional version. APA provides a student title page guide (PDF, 199KB) to assist students in creating their title pages.

Student title page

The student title page includes the paper title, author names (the byline), author affiliation, course number and name for which the paper is being submitted, instructor name, assignment due date, and page number, as shown in this example.

Title page setup is covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Section 2.3 and the Concise Guide Section 1.6

Related handouts

Student Title Page Guide (PDF, 263KB)
Student Paper Setup Guide (PDF, 3MB)

Student papers do not include a running head unless requested by the instructor or institution.

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Paper title	Place the title three to four lines down from the top of the title page. Center it and type it in bold font. Capitalize of the title. Place the main title and any subtitle on separate double-spaced lines if desired. There is no maximum length for titles; however, keep titles focused and include key terms.
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Assignment due date	Provide the due date for the assignment. Center the due date on the next double-spaced line after the instructor name. Use the date format commonly used in your country.	October 18, 2020 18 October 2020
	Use the page number 1 on the title page. Use the automatic page-numbering function of your word processing program to insert page numbers in the top right corner of the page header.	1

Professional title page

The professional title page includes the paper title, author names (the byline), author affiliation(s), author note, running head, and page number, as shown in the following example.

Follow the guidelines described next to format each element of the professional title page.


Paper title	Place the title three to four lines down from the top of the title page. Center it and type it in bold font. Capitalize of the title. Place the main title and any subtitle on separate double-spaced lines if desired. There is no maximum length for titles; however, keep titles focused and include key terms.
Author names	Place one double-spaced blank line between the paper title and the author names. Center author names on their own line. If there are two authors, use the word “and” between authors; if there are three or more authors, place a comma between author names and use the word “and” before the final author name.	Francesca Humboldt
Author names	When different authors have different affiliations, use superscript numerals after author names to connect the names to the appropriate affiliation(s). If all authors have the same affiliation, superscript numerals are not used (see Section 2.3 of the for more on how to set up bylines and affiliations).	Tracy Reuter , Arielle Borovsky , and Casey Lew-Williams
Author affiliation	For a professional paper, the affiliation is the institution at which the research was conducted. Include both the name of any department and the name of the college, university, or other institution, separated by a comma. Center the affiliation on the next double-spaced line after the author names; when there are multiple affiliations, center each affiliation on its own line.	Department of Nursing, Morrigan University
Author affiliation	When different authors have different affiliations, use superscript numerals before affiliations to connect the affiliations to the appropriate author(s). Do not use superscript numerals if all authors share the same affiliations (see Section 2.3 of the for more).	Department of Psychology, Princeton University Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University
Author note	Place the author note in the bottom half of the title page. Center and bold the label “Author Note.” Align the paragraphs of the author note to the left. For further information on the contents of the author note, see Section 2.7 of the .	n/a
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	Use the page number 1 on the title page. Use the automatic page-numbering function of your word processing program to insert page numbers in the top right corner of the page header.	1

IMAGES

The Meaning, Structure and Purpose of Life
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(PDF) Research, a Way of Life
19 Life Purpose Examples to Find Your True Purpose
What is the purpose of life Essay Example
International Journal of Life Sciences Scientific Research Template

COMMENTS

Life Crafting as a Way to Find Purpose and Meaning in Life
In this paper, we discuss evidence-based ways of finding purpose, via a process that we call "life crafting.". This process fits within positive psychology and the salutogenesis framework - an approach focusing on factors that support human health and well-being, instead of factors that cause disease.
(PDF) The Real Purpose Of Life
Generally, the purpose of life is to find meaning, to develop. relationships, to learn, to grow, and to exp erience joy. Additionally, some people may also see. life's purpose as serving the ...
Meaning in Life: An Important Factor for the Psychological Well-Being
Presence of Meaning and Search for Meaning. Although preliminary evidence shows that meaning in life may influence health, current research is often limited by conceptual concerns (Sherman & Simonton, 2012; Sherman et al., 2010).The multidimensional character of the concept resulted in a multitude of research tapping into different aspects of the construct (for a review, see Morgan & Farsides ...
Perceived meaning of life and satisfaction with life: A research
Perceived meaning of life and satisfaction with life: A research synthesis using an online finding archive. ... I am always looking to find my life's purpose I am always searching for something that makes my life feel significant. I am seeking a purpose or mission for my life. ... CEIS working paper 259. Available online at: https://ssrn.com ...
The Multifaceted Benefits of Purpose in Life
Purpose in life is defined as a distal aim that organizes, stimulates, and guides the selection of short-and long-term goals (McKnight & Kashdan, 2009;Ryff, 1989). ... In the current paper, I ...
Life Crafting as a Way to Find Purpose and Meaning in Life
Prior research has shown that personal goal setting and goal attainment plans help people gain a direction or a sense of purpose in life. Research findings from the field of positive psychology, such as salutogenesis, implementation intentions, value congruence, broaden-and-build, and goal-setting literature, can help in building a ...
(PDF) Origins of Purpose in Life: Refining our Understanding of a Life
The purpose of the present paper is to provide a conceptual framework to organize a comprehensive review of previous game location research and provide direction for future research.
Meaning in Life as Comprehension, Purpose, and Mattering: Toward
Meaning in Life as Comprehension, Purpose, and Mattering: Toward Integration and New Research Questions Login S. George [email protected] and Crystal L. Park View all authors and affiliations Volume 20 , Issue 3
The relationship between purpose in life and depression and anxiety: A
Research on purpose in life has suggested that there are moderate to strong links to improved physical health (Heidrich, 1993; Kim et al ... seminal paper defined psychological well-being as an array of positive functioning behaviors, cognitions, and attitudes. Included in this definition are six separate constructs: purpose in life, autonomy ...
Purpose in Life: A Reconceptualization for Very Late Life
Purpose in life has been defined as having goals, aims, objectives, and a sense of directedness that give meaning to one's life and existence. Scales that measure purpose in life reflect this future-oriented conceptualization and research using these measures has consistently found that purpose in life tends to be lower for older adults than for those in earlier stages of life. In this ...
Routines and Meaning in Life
Meaning in life (MIL) is considered a cornerstone of well-being (Wong & Fry, 1998), a central human motivation (Frankl, 1963/1984), and a necessity of life (Maslow, 1968).Meaning is a desired feeling state that humans strive to attain, and its absence is decidedly disruptive (Janoff-Bulman, 1992).A large and growing body of research justifies the value given to MIL as a crucial aspect of human ...
The Science of Meaning in Life
Meaning in life has long been a mystery of human existence. In this review, we seek to demystify this construct. Focusing on the subjective experience of meaning in life, we review how it has been measured and briefly describe its correlates. Then we review evidence that meaning in life, for all its mystery, is a rather commonplace experience. We then define the construct and review its ...
Purpose in Life Predicts Better Emotional Recovery from Negative ...
Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life's experiences, especially when confronting life's challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability ...
Relationships between Mindfulness, Purpose in Life, Happiness, Anxiety
1.1. Purpose in Life and Behavioral Activation as Mediators between Mindfulness and Outcomes. Purpose in life may be defined as an elementary aim that serves to self-organize and inspire concrete goals, trigger behaviors, and provide meaningfulness assessments [].Having life purposes and valuable aims that orient one's behavior and provide a sense of direction is mentioned as a key ...
The Meaning of Life
Blumenfeld, D., 2009, "Living Life over Again", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 79: 357-86 ... Goetz, S., 2012, The Purpose of Life: A Theistic Perspective, New ... "The Meaning of Life: Subjectivism, Objectivism, and Divine Support", in The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham, N. Athanassoulis and S ...
Life Purpose in Youth: Turning Potential Into a Lifelong Pursuit of
I take an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach (e.g., Ambrose & Cross, 2009) toward integrating life purpose with theory and research addressing both gifted and typical populations to stimulate scholar and educator conversations that address person-situation interactions in which purpose contributes to gifted behavior or in which purpose ...
11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing
A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources. If you are curious about the possibility of life on Mars, for example, you might choose to research the topic.
Sense of Purpose in Life and Subsequent Physical, Behavioral, and
The exposure, purpose in life, was then assessed 4 years later in the baseline wave (t 1, 2010/2012), ... Eric S. Kim has worked as a consultant with AARP and UnitedHealth Group which may be affected by the research reported in the enclosed paper. Tyler VanderWeele has worked as a consultant with Aetna Inc.
Lacking purpose later in life could signal cognitive decline
The research assessed six key components of psychological well-being: self-acceptance, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, positive relations with others, and personal growth. Intriguingly, two specific aspects showed the earliest and most significant declines.
(PDF) Purpose in Life: A Brief Review of the Literature and Its
A recent review on the role of purpose in life in school psychology and counselling [27] summarized the main findings of research from the past 20 years: teenagers with a greater sense of purpose ...
Having a Purpose In Life May Lessen The Risk Of Early Death
Rozanski published a 2016 paper in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, for example, that used data from 10 studies to show that strong life purpose was associated with reduced risk of mortality ...
Research Paper Purpose Statement Examples
A purpose statement clearly defines the objective of your qualitative or quantitative research. Learn how to create one through unique and real-world examples.
Meaning and Purpose in Life and Well-being: a Life-span Perspective
Significant age differences were found on five life attitude dimensions: Life Purpose (LP), Death Acceptance (DA), Goal Seeking (GS), Future Meaning (FM), and Existential Vacuum (EV). LP and DA ...
Title page setup
For a professional paper, the affiliation is the institution at which the research was conducted. Include both the name of any department and the name of the college, university, or other institution, separated by a comma. Center the affiliation on the next double-spaced line after the author names; when there are multiple affiliations, center ...