On knowing more than we can tell: Intuitive processes and the experience of meaning

Heintzelman, Samantha J.; King, Laura A.

doi:10.1080/17439760.2013.830758

Cited by 62 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…This approach may be problematic because meaning in life is, at its heart, a subjective experience. Several studies have argued that self-report is the best way to capture meaning in life [ 46 , 50 , 51 ]. However, obtaining self-report using less structured approaches may add value, for example by using experience sampling methods [ 52 ] or qualitative methods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rasch analysis of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire among adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand

Schutte

Wissing

Ellis

et al. 2016

Health Qual Life Outcomes

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BackgroundMeaning in life is a key indicator of subjective well-being and quality of life. Further developments in understanding and enhancing the construct will depend inter alia on the sound measurement thereof. This study is at the forefront of applying modern psychometric techniques to the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, a scale widely used to assess meaning in life.MethodThe Rasch rating scale model was applied to the Presence and Search subscales of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire using a sample of 601 adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.ResultsThe Presence subscale was insensitive at high levels of presence of meaning while the majority of the respondents fell in that range. Removal of item 9 (“My life has no clear purpose”) and collapsing the response categories indicative of low and medium levels of the latent construct significantly improved the subscale’s targeting and fit to the Rasch model, resulting in a subscale that exhibited differential item functioning on items 1 (“I understand my life’s meaning”), 4 (“My life has a clear sense of purpose”), and 5 (“I have a good sense of what makes my life meaningful”) for country, but none for gender, age group, or education level. The Search subscale yielded disordered category threshold calibrations, but after collapsing some of the response categories representing low and medium levels of the target construct, a subscale that demonstrated good fit to the Rasch model, good targeting, and no differential item functioning resulted.ConclusionsIn terms of this particular scale, adaptation of the rating scale and removal of item 9 is recommended. Country-level parameter estimates may be needed for items that exhibited differential item functioning. The study also has significant implications for the theory, measurement, and practice of meaning in and quality of life in general. Reasons for and the far-reaching implications of the insensitivity of the Presence subscale for high levels of presence of meaning on, for example, the correlation between meaning in life and indicators of health are contemplated. Further investigation of the construct’s nature and measurement, especially at high levels, is indicated.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rasch analysis of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire among adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand

Schutte

Wissing

Ellis

et al. 2016

Health Qual Life Outcomes

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“…A number of scholars have offered answers to this question in conceptual definitions of meaning in life. Although these vary, they share three common themes (Heintzelman & King, 2013a), namely, purpose (i.e., goal direction), significance (i.e., mattering), and coherence (i.e., the presence of reliable connections). Each of these themes is captured in the following definition offered by Steger (2012):…”

Section: The Feeling Of Meaningmentioning

confidence: 98%

(The Feeling of) Meaning-as-Information

Heintzelman

King

2014

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

Self Cite

170

162

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The desire for meaning is recognized as a central human motive. Yet, knowing that people want meaning does not explain its function. What adaptive problem does this experience solve? Drawing on the feelings-as-information hypothesis, we propose that the feeling of meaning provides information about the presence of reliable patterns and coherence in the environment, information that is not provided by affect. We review research demonstrating that manipulations of stimulus coherence influence subjective reports of meaning in life but not affect. We demonstrate that manipulations that foster an associative mindset enhance meaning. The meaning-as-information perspective embeds meaning in a network of foundational functions including associative learning, perception, cognition, and neural processing. This approach challenges assumptions about meaning, including its motivational appeal, the roles of expectancies and novelty in this experience, and the notion that meaning is inherently constructed. Implications for constructed meaning and existential meanings are discussed.

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“…In addition to different measures and definitions of meaning (Leontiev, 2013;Park and George, 2013), difficulties understanding the existentially indifferent may reflect researchers' tendency to focus on conscious, reflective meaning making processes. Until we know more about the unconscious processes that give rise to an intuitive sense of meaningfulness under ordinary conditions (Heintzelman and King, 2013), it will be difficult to sort out the responses of those who are indifferent or feel no need to search for meaning.…”

Section: The Problem Of Indifference Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is Nonreligion? On the Virtues of a Meaning Systems Framework for Studying Nonreligious and Religious Worldviews in the Context of Everyday Life

Taves

2018

Secularism and Nonreligion

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The study of "nonreligion" helpfully expands our focus beyond atheism and "nonbelief" (Lee, 2012), while at the same time introducing new problems. In characterizing our object of study as nonreligion, we are indicating that we want to think about it-whatever it is-in relation to religion. This means that the study of nonreligion faces the same definitional problems that have long plagued the study of religion. Moreover, the binary contrast between religion/nonreligion suggests that there is a clear, stable distinction between them, something that has been questioned in a number of NSRN blog posts (see, for example, Hutchings (2016) on angels and the afterlife, and Baker (2017) on the paranormal). In expanding the study of religion to include nonreligion, scholars are pushing our already troubled relationship with our key terms to the breaking point. That is not necessarily a bad thing, however, as it challenges us to try to solve some of these long-standing definitional problems. Thinking about the religion/nonreligion binary as setting up a tacit comparison suggests a possible way forward. Structurally, a comparison involves two or more items, in this case religion and nonreligion, that the scholar juxtaposes based on a similarity that s/he perceives between them. The perceived similarities may be a similar feature or a set of features that define a larger category that encompasses them both. We can compare a red apple and a red ball based on their common feature Taves: What is Nonreligion? On the Virtues of a Meaning Systems Framework for Studying Nonreligious and Religious Worldviews in the Context of Everyday Life

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On knowing more than we can tell: Intuitive processes and the experience of meaning

Cited by 62 publications

References 77 publications

Rasch analysis of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire among adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand

Rasch analysis of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire among adults from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand

(The Feeling of) Meaning-as-Information

What is Nonreligion? On the Virtues of a Meaning Systems Framework for Studying Nonreligious and Religious Worldviews in the Context of Everyday Life

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