What makes a life meaningful? Folk intuitions about the content and shape of meaningful lives.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joffrey Fuhrer ◽  
Florian Cova
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Folk Concept ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Folk Intuitions ◽  
Susan Wolf ◽  
Meaningful Lives

It is often assumed that most people want their life to be “meaningful”. But what exactly does this mean? Though numerous researches have documented which factors lead people to experience their life as meaningful and people’s conceptions about the best ways to secure a meaningful life, investigations in people’s concept of meaningful life are scarce. In this paper, we investigate the folk concept of a meaningful life by studying people’s third-person attribution of meaningfulness. We draw on hypotheses from the philosophical literature, and notably on the work of Susan Wolf (Study 1) and Antti Kauppinen (Study 2). In Study 1, we find that individuals who are successful, competent, and engaged in valuable and important goals are considered to have more meaningful lives. In Study 2, we find that the meaningfulness of a life did not depend only on its components, but also on the order in which these elements were ordered to form a coherent whole (the “narrative shape” of this life). Additionally, our results stress the importance of morality in participants’ assessments of meaningfulness. Overall, our results highlight the fruitfulness of drawing on the philosophical literature to investigate the folk concept of meaningful life.

scholarly journals The Ordinary Concept of a Meaningful Life: The Role of Subjective and Objective Factors in Third-Person Attributions of Meaning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Prinzing ◽  
Julian De Freitas ◽  
Barbara Fredrickson
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Total N ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Meaningful Lives

The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, yet the ordinary concept of a meaningfullife is poorly understood. Across six experiments (total N = 2,539), we investigated whether third-person attributions of meaning depend on the psychological states an agent experiences (feelings of interest, engagement, and fulfillment), or on the objective conditions of their life (e.g., their effects on others). Studies 1a–b found that laypeople think subjective and objective factors contribute independently to the meaningfulness of a person’s life. Studies 2a–b found that positive mental states are thought to make a life more meaningful, even if derived from senseless activities (e.g., hand-copying the dictionary). Studies 3a–b found that agents engaged in morally bad activities are not thought to have meaningful lives, even if they feel fulfilled. In short, both an agents’ subjective mental states and objective impact on the world affect how meaningful their lives appear.

scholarly journals Folk Intuitions and the Conditional Ability to Do Otherwise

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nadelhoffer ◽  
Siyuan Yin ◽  
Rose Graves
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Folk Intuitions ◽  
Ability To Do Otherwise

In a series of three pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iddo Landau
Keyword(s):  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Meaningful Lives

The second chapter presents ten implications of the analysis of meaningfulness suggested in the first chapter. One of these implications is that the degree of meaning in life is not a given that we just have to learn to live with; it can often be changed. Another is that if we want to make an insufficiently meaningful life more meaningful, we should look for what is valuable and try to enhance it in our lives. A third is that it is wrong that if what is meaningful to us changes from time to time our lives are not meaningful. It is also argued that we can lead meaningful lives without being unique.

A Meaningful life

Human Affairs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-444
Author(s):  
John Shand
Keyword(s):  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Meaningful Lives

Abstract There can be no such thing as the meaningful life, but only a meaningful life for a particular life as it is lived. Thus, there are meaningful lives, which are lives that make sense and are sufficiently aligned, these two characteristics being honed successively by the limits of a particular contingent form of life, a particular individual of that form of life, and a particular time in the life of that individual. Only the form of a meaningful life may be given, which is sense and alignment, whereas its content may only be determined by the individual whose life it is.

Backtalk

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-80
Author(s):  
Lauren Porosoff
Keyword(s):  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Specific Outcome ◽  
Meaningful Lives

When doing schoolwork is framed as a precondition for achieving a particular outcome, students only feel satisfaction if and when they achieve the outcome. They might be less likely to do their work when no specific outcome is guaranteed. However, if doing schoolwork is framed as a component of living a meaningful life, students can find satisfaction in the work itself and feel motivated to keep working. Teachers can help students clarify what a meaningful life is for each of them and how their assignments contribute to meaningful lives.

scholarly journals Is the desire for a meaningful life a selfless desire?

Human Affairs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-452
Author(s):  
Joshua Lewis Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Good Thing ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
The People ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Susan Wolf

Abstract Susan Wolf defines a meaningful life as one that is somewhat successfully engaged in promoting positive value. I grant this claim; however, I disagree with Wolf’s theory about why we desire meaningfulness, so understood. She suggests that the human desire for meaningfulness is derived from an awareness of ourselves as equally insignificant in the universe and a resulting anti-solipsistic concern for promoting goodness outside the boundaries of our own lives. I accept that this may succeed in explaining why people want to engage in projects that happen to be meaningful. Nevertheless, I argue that Wolf fails to explain why people have a desire for meaningfulness itself. In other words, she has told us one reason we may be motivated to promote positive value, but not why we personally want to be the people who promote it—why we think it is a good thing that meaningful acts be done, but not why we want them to be our meaningful acts. In detailing my response, I follow Wolf in relating our desire for meaningfulness to a kind of love-based motivation. However, I argue that it has more in common with a selfish form of love than the altruistic kind of love proposed by Wolf. Finally, I suggest an alternative explanation which I believe can more fully account for our desire for meaningfulness: the prospect of disappearing from the universe without a trace makes us anxious, so we pursue meaningful achievements in an attempt to make our own physical deaths less final.

Measuring the Big Five in Self-Report and Other Ratings

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Barbaranelli ◽  
Gian Vittorio Caprara
Keyword(s):  
Big Five ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Structural Equation Models ◽  
Error Variance ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Fit Indexes ◽  
Response Modes

Summary: The aim of the study is to assess the construct validity of two different measures of the Big Five, matching two “response modes” (phrase-questionnaire and list of adjectives) and two sources of information or raters (self-report and other ratings). Two-hundred subjects, equally divided in males and females, were administered the self-report versions of the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ) and the Big Five Observer (BFO), a list of bipolar pairs of adjectives ( Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Borgogni, 1993 , 1994 ). Every subject was rated by six acquaintances, then aggregated by means of the same instruments used for the self-report, but worded in a third-person format. The multitrait-multimethod matrix derived from these measures was then analyzed via Structural Equation Models according to the criteria proposed by Widaman (1985) , Marsh (1989) , and Bagozzi (1994) . In particular, four different models were compared. While the global fit indexes of the models were only moderate, convergent and discriminant validities were clearly supported, and method and error variance were moderate or low.

First-Person Experiments in Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Parameters ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Mental Contents

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.

Effects of Light-Hearted and Serious Entertainment on Enjoyment of the First and Third Person

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Enjoyment ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.

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