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
What explanation is there for why spending money on others did not affect ppt’s search for meaning?
- Steger, Kashdan, Sullivan + Lorentz, 2008
- reason people often end up searching for meaning is from current lack of meaning - Engaging in pro-social behaviour tends to increase presences of meaning so unlikely to increase active looking for meaning (may eve decrease it!)
How was E3 carried out?
- given money to spend on self or others
- how did they spend the money?
- assessed their…
- sense of self-worth
- social connection to others
- affirmation of values
- their happiness (PANAS)
- sense of meaning in life
What was used in E3 to measure their happiness levels?
PANAS
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule
How were the other measure, other than happiness, measured?
evaluated whether the way they spent the money…
- Self-worth
- made them feel good + worthy person
- xp an increase in self-esteem? - Social connection
- feel closer to others?
- increased sense of belonging to community?
- helped them feel like they were an important part of the community? - Sense of personal control
- had control over how life unfolded?
- gave them a sense of control over things they wanted to accomplish in life? - Affirmation of values
- consistent with moral values?
- morally right? - Meaning in life
- spent in a meaningful way?
- alternative meaningful way of spending
- contributed to their sense of meaningful in life in general?
What were the findings of E3?
- Spending money on other people increased perceptions of meaning vs self
- perceptions of self worth + social connection = proposed mediators
What did they conclude from E3?
- Prosocial behaviour increases perceptions of meaning in life
- PARTIALLY through increasing perceptions of self-worth
What needs to be true for a mediation to be established?
Independent variable must have a statistically reliable effect on the proposed mediator
What did Dunn et al 2008 find about happiness when people spent money on others?
momentary increase in happiness
What did Ralph Waldo Emerson say about the purpose of life?
The purpose of life is not to be happy, but rather it is to be useful to others
How has the findings of the study challenged current understanding of why people help?
- general understanding = people to do it to receive back + related to reputational concerns
- findings = self-sustaining act where reciprocity does not need to be the only incentive
What is an alternative explanation for self-worth mediating meaningfulness being extracted from helping?
Waytz et al 2015 = mental simulation
Has been associated with higher % of meaningfulness
1. Kray et al, 2010 Thinking about how an important life event might never occur increases perceptions of meaningfulness
