Positive traits, values and attitudes - MEANINGFULLNESS Flashcards
List Baumeister’s four needs for meaning / 4 patterns of motivation that guide how people make sense of their lives
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
Under purpose, what are goals and fulfillment?
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
What do humanists stress?
the importance of meaningfulness in one’s life
How are values seen as a hierarchy?
• Going from specific to general reaching a values base → highest level of justification upon which no other justifications can be drawn
What did Baumeister (1991) find about anomie and alienation?
anomie (lack of values), alienation (lack of belongingness) associated with psychological distress and pathology
What happens when all 4 needs for meaning aren’t met?
life will seem insufficiently meaningful
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?
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
What did Robak & Griffin (2000) find ?
purpose, sense of coherence, predict positive functioning → low levels of pathology
what are intrinsic vs. extrinsic goals?
Extrinsic → outward achievements
Intrinsic → self betterment
What did Wong & Fry (1998) find?
strong sense of meaning associated with life satisfaction and happiness; lack of meaning = depression, disengagement
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?
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
What happened in Kasser & Sheldon;s experiment when they made people anxious by writing about death and then asked them about their future income
Activating anxiety =
• Increases estimates of future income
• Increases estimates of spending on possessions
> Does low emotional well-being (anxiety) drive materialism?
Can happiness be viewed as a goal?
example?
- 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
What are the 4 sources of meaning Emmons (goals and needs) found by looking through peoples life stories
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
Which 3 of emmons sources f meaning predict greater SWB (subjective well being)
1) Intimacy/relationships
2) Self-transcendence/generativity
3) Religion/spirituality
• Greater positive affect
• Marital satisfaction
• Overall life satisfaction
Which of emmons sources of meaning predict lower SWB?
• 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
How do people cope with suffering and misfortune? (taylor et al)
- Finding purpose in it
- Rebuilding a sense of mastery or control
- Bolstering their self-worth
How does making meaning interact with health and illness (James Pennebaker) when people wrote about traumatic events and illness
- Improves immune system functioning
- Reduces illness and physician visits
- Improves liver enzyme functioning
How does making meaning excercise help in dealing with loss of partner due to AIDS in HIV-positives
• Slower HIV progression
How does making meaning interact with traumatic events? (Easterling et al )
• at the beginning: Higher negative, lower positive affect initially
• later on: Higher positive, lower negative affect weeks later
→ long term benefits
What are the 2 types of goals correlated with according to - Kasser & Ryan (1996)
- 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
in there an increase in SWB with income?
Overall: beyond basic level, no increase in SWB with increases in income
What are the two forms of meaning making?
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
within Situation-specific meaning-making what is Benefit finding and Attribution finding?
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
Is meaningfulness necessary or sufficient?
it is NECESSARY but NOT SUFFICIENT
• Can have meaningfulness without happiness
• Cannot have happiness without meaningfulness
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?
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
how is meaning created in psychotherapy?
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
What is quality of life therapy?
revising goals, standards, and priorities to boost life happiness and satisfaction (Frisch, 1998)
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
Viktor Frankl
what is the ultimate values base
value that can no longer be justified by higher values/standards
“god’s will”
> determines all the lower level hierarchies of values
what does meaning establish in people
establishes personal identity, self worth
