Positive traits, values and attitudes - MEANINGFULLNESS

Question 1

List Baumeister’s four needs for meaning / 4 patterns of motivation that guide how people make sense of their lives

Answer 1

1) Purpose: connection of present to future events
2) Sense of efficacy: sense of control over events, actions, one’s life
3) Self-worth : intrinsic personal value
4) Values: moral, ethical grounds for action

Question 2

Under purpose, what are goals and fulfillment?

Answer 2

Goals (specific goals): desired objective future states
o Getting a university degree
o Can tell whether or not it has been achieved

Fulfilments: desired subjective future states:
o Cannot be verified by others outside oneself
o Living happily, Going to heaven

Question 3

What do humanists stress?

Answer 3

the importance of meaningfulness in one’s life

Question 4

How are values seen as a hierarchy?

Answer 4

• Going from specific to general reaching a values base → highest level of justification upon which no other justifications can be drawn

Question 5

What did Baumeister (1991) find about anomie and alienation?

Answer 5

anomie (lack of values), alienation (lack of belongingness) associated with psychological distress and pathology

Question 6

What happens when all 4 needs for meaning aren’t met?

Answer 6

life will seem insufficiently meaningful

Question 7

What are the 3 methodologies that explore where we find meaning in our lives?
3 researchers come to the exact same econclusions

what did Ebersole, emmons and wong find?

Answer 7

1) Ebersole
• Life work and  Relationships 
• Freud → happy life = ability to love and to work
• Religious beliefs → guide behaviour, moral values, justify events
• Service → helping others
2) Emmons
• Achievement → broader than life work
• Intimacy
• Religion/spirituality
• Service 
3) Wong
• Achievement
• Relationship
• Religion
• Self-transcendence → benefit and betterment of others

Question 8

What did Robak & Griffin (2000) find ?

Answer 8

purpose, sense of coherence, predict positive functioning → low levels of pathology

Question 9

what are intrinsic vs. extrinsic goals?

Answer 9

Extrinsic → outward achievements

Intrinsic → self betterment

Question 10

What did Wong & Fry (1998) find?

Answer 10

strong sense of meaning associated with life satisfaction and happiness; lack of meaning = depression, disengagement

Question 11

What are the 2 types of goals (intrinsic and extrinsic) correlated with according to Ryan et al (1999) – replicated K&R w/Russian students

what do these findings show?

Answer 11

Extrinsic goals (money, success, attractiveness)
• Negatively related to self-actualization
• Negatively related to self-esteem
• Negatively related to life satisfaction
> Attaining extrinsic goals does not affect SWB
> Attaining intrinsic goals improves SWB

• Not just in US

Question 12

What happened in Kasser & Sheldon;s experiment when they made people anxious by writing about death and then asked them about their future income

Answer 12

Activating anxiety =
• Increases estimates of future income
• Increases estimates of spending on possessions
> Does low emotional well-being (anxiety) drive materialism?

Question 13

Can happiness be viewed as a goal?

example?

Answer 13

• Happiness is an outcome of worthwhile activities that do not have happiness as their primary focus
• Cant have happiness as a goal and expect to achieve it; happiness is not something you directly seek, it is a by-product of other activities, particularly service and self-transcendence goals,
  ex. : happiness is not the goal of flow but the activity itself is, happiness is only a by-product

Question 14

What are the 4 sources of meaning Emmons (goals and needs) found by looking through peoples life stories

Answer 14

1) Achievement/power
• Be the best when with a group of people
• Get others to see my point of view
2) Intimacy/relationships
• Help my friends and let them know I care
• Accept others as they are
3) Religion/spirituality
• Deepen my relationship with God
• Learn to tune in to a higher power all day
4) Self-transcendence/generativity
• Feel useful to society
• Be a good role model for my siblings

Question 15

Which 3 of emmons sources f meaning predict greater SWB (subjective well being)

Answer 15

1) Intimacy/relationships
2) Self-transcendence/generativity
3) Religion/spirituality
• Greater positive affect
• Marital satisfaction
• Overall life satisfaction

Question 16

Which of emmons sources of meaning predict lower SWB?

Answer 16

• Achievement/power → meaning largely driven by achievements → materialism, valuing in terms of material goods is not a route to life satisfaction
= Higher levels of negative affect

Question 17

How do people cope with suffering and misfortune? (taylor et al)

Answer 17

• Finding purpose in it
• Rebuilding a sense of mastery or control
• Bolstering their self-worth

Question 18

How does making meaning interact with health and illness (James Pennebaker) when people wrote about traumatic events and illness

Answer 18

• Improves immune system functioning
• Reduces illness and physician visits
• Improves liver enzyme functioning

Question 19

How does making meaning excercise help in dealing with loss of partner due to AIDS in HIV-positives

Answer 19

• Slower HIV progression

Question 20

How does making meaning interact with traumatic events? (Easterling et al )

Answer 20

• at the beginning: Higher negative, lower positive affect initially
• later on: Higher positive, lower negative affect weeks later
→ long term benefits

Question 21

What are the 2 types of goals correlated with according to - Kasser & Ryan (1996)

Answer 21

• Higher levels of SWB for intrinsic goals
• Extrinsic goals (money, success, attractiveness) = Negatively related to vitality, self-actualization and Positively related to depression, anxiety, etc

Question 22

in there an increase in SWB with income?

Answer 22

Overall: beyond basic level, no increase in SWB with increases in income

Question 23

What are the two forms of meaning making?

Answer 23

1) Global meaning-making (Establishing basic values and long-term beliefs)
• Overall, Moral values, Large scale fulfillments

2) Situation-specific meaning-making (Finding meaning in a situation that is congruent with long-term beliefs and values)
• Especially true when things go badly

Question 24

within Situation-specific meaning-making what is Benefit finding and Attribution finding?

Answer 24

1) Benefit-finding: seeing the silver lining in adversity
o Shared grief put aside

2) Attribution-finding: making sense of adversity. Why did it happen?
o May or may not be religious based

Question 25

Is meaningfulness necessary or sufficient?

Answer 25

it is NECESSARY but NOT SUFFICIENT
• Can have meaningfulness without happiness
• Cannot have happiness without meaningfulness

Question 26

When is meaning most important (as found by Davis et al’s study of losing a family member)
- how did making sense of the loss or finding postives help?

Answer 26

important in misfortune
• Davis et al (1988): coping with death of family member aided by meaning making
• Making sense of the loss, Finding something positive in the experience
• For 12 months, making sense predicted less distress
• For 18 months, finding positives predicted less distress

Question 27

how is meaning created in psychotherapy?

Answer 27

1) quality of life therapy
2) Meaning-centered counselling: Wong (1998)
3) Goal-focused group psychotherapy: Klausner et al (1998)
4) Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy
5) - Cognitive-behavioural narrative → why are things happening

Question 28

What is quality of life therapy?

Answer 28

revising goals, standards, and priorities to boost life happiness and satisfaction (Frisch, 1998)

Question 29

who said this

• Self-actualization is not man’s ultimate destination. It is not even his primary intention. Self-actualization, if made an end in itself, contradicts the self-transcendent quality of human existence. Like happiness, self-actualization is an effect, the effect of meaning fulfilment. Only to the extent that man fulfills a meaning out there in the world does he fulfill himself. If he sets out to actualize himself rather than fulfill a meaning, self-actualization immediately loses its justification
• As the boomerang comes back to the hunter who has thrown it only if it has missed its target, man, too, returns to himself and is intent upon self-actualization only if he has missed his mission

Answer 29

Viktor Frankl

Question 30

what is the ultimate values base

Answer 30

value that can no longer be justified by higher values/standards
“god’s will”
> determines all the lower level hierarchies of values

Question 31

what does meaning establish in people

Answer 31

establishes personal identity, self worth