Klein PROSOCIAL behaviour increases perceptions of meaning in life Flashcards
What has viewing one’s life as meaningful been associated with?
○ Greater longevity
○ Better physical health
○ Reduced depression + anxiety
What is taking a communal perspective (vs an individual perspective) pro-social behaviour is critical for creating?
Trust + cooperation
- to sustain impersonal + complex societies + markets
What was the aim of the paper?
= measure association between a particular form of prosocial behaviour (volunteering) + sense of meaning in life
What 2 reasons are there to predict helping others can increase a sense of meaning in life?
- increase self-worth
2. Social connections with others
How can helping others potentially increase self-worth thus increasing a sense of meaning in life?
- A basic need to feel meaning since prosocial behaviour is universally admired + valued
- Way to gain social acceptance + build positive reputation = help increase status in community
= reputational benefits due to prosocial behaviour = increase self-worth = increase sense of meaningful life
How can helping others potentially result in social connection thus increasing a sense of meaning in life?
- Social exclusion + loneliness can = psychological damage, including decreased sense of meaning of life
- One of the most basic way to establish + reinforce social connection
- Sense of connection to others = increase meaningfulness
What are the psychological benefits of helping others?
- Boost reputation = Helper
- reputation mechanism - underling motivation for most prosocial behaviour? - Reciprocity = Recipient: motivates to cooperate w/ helper in the future
- Hedonic (increase of positive emotions)
- spending more money on others
- volunteering
Just because prosocial behaviour creates hedonic benefits, it does not necessarily mean that it also creates eudaemonic (happiness) benefits. Why?
- meaningfulness + happiness are distinct
- meaning can be found in painful events
- nostalgic reflection on the past increases sense of meaning despite being hedrnically negative - meaningfulness covers wider emotions
- meaningfulness associated with cognitive process
- mental simulation
- counterfactual thinking
What was the procedure to the study E1?
- survey - asking hrs of volunteering per month in 3 context
- volunteering for one’s place of worship
- Volunteering for the community, not via own place of worship
- Volunteering for community via own place of worship - level of agreement to “my life has a real purpose”
What demographic variables were controlled for in E1?
- education
- income
- race
- gender
- geographic location
- religious denomination
What were the results of E1?
- Greater volunteering associated w/ stronger belief that one’s life has a purpose across all forms of volunteering
- 2 of 7 demographic variables also affected perceptions of life purpose
- religious denomination = non-religious –> weaker sense of purpose
- gender = women greater senes vs men
What did they conclude from E1?
positive effect of prosocial behaviour on meaning in life
What was the difference between E1, E2 + E3?
E1 = correlation study, volunteering behaviour + meaning in life E2 = experimental manipulation of spending money to benefit others + more comprehensive measure of meaning in life E3 = explored possible mechanism for why prosocial behaviour increases perceptions of meaning in life
How was E2 carried out?
- Prosocial vs self-interested group
- prosocial = spend money to buy present for someone
- self-interested = spend money on yourself - Meaning of Life Qaire MLQ
- 10 statements divided into 2 sub-scales based on 2 different theoretical constructs
- First sub-scale = presence of meaning in life MAIN
“My life has a clear sense of purpose”
- Second sub-scale = active search for meaning in life - asked how closely they followed spending instruction
- Describe purchases in a few sentences
What were the results of E2?
- Spending money on others increased perceptions of meaning in life
- Spending money on others DID NOT affect ppt’s search for meaning
