Relationships Between Meaning in Life, Social and Achievement Events, and Positive and Negative Affect in Daily Life

Abstract

Research on meaning in life has generally focused on global meaning judgments. This study examined how people's daily experiences, represented by events that occur in daily life, influence their perceived sense of meaning on a daily basis. One hundred sixty-two college students completed daily reports for 2 weeks. We examined the relationships among daily social and achievement events, daily positive and negative affect, and daily meaning in life. In addition, we tested the possible moderating influence of depressive symptoms on these relationships. Positive daily social and achievement events were related to greater daily meaning, above and beyond the contributions of daily positive and negative affect. Negative social and achievement events were related to less daily meaning, and negative achievement events covaried with daily meaning above and beyond positive and negative affect. Depression moderated the relationships between positive events and meaning, such that people who reported more depressive symptoms had greater increases in daily meaning in response to positive social and achievement events than individuals who reported fewer symptoms. These findings suggest the important role that daily events may play in fluctuations in people's affective experiences and sense of meaning in life.

The dynamics of searching for meaning and presence of meaning in daily life

“…In addition to the relationships between presence and search, we examined the relationships between each construct and several well‐being indicators. The relationships between presence and well‐being were positive at both the between‐ and within‐person relationships, which is consistent with previous research (e.g., King et al, ; Machell et al, ; Steger et al, ). In contrast, searching for MIL was negatively related to well‐being at the between‐person level, which is also consistent with previous research.…”

“…Regardless, similar to the results of trait‐level studies, presence of MIL and well‐being have been found to be positively related at the within‐person level. Daily presence of MIL has been found to be positively related to daily positive affect and negatively related to negative affect (King et al, ; Machell, Kashdan, Short, & Nezlek, ). Daily presence of MIL was also found to be positively related to a measure of subjective well‐being that consisted of a combination of daily life satisfaction and affect balance (positive affect minus negative affect) (Steger & Frazier, ).…”

How does meaning in life predict proactive coping? The self‐regulatory mechanism on emotion and cognition

“…Daily measures of MIL, PA, and FTF were created based on items from the pre‐post assessment measures to assess state levels of these variables on the specific days when the participants filled out the daily surveys. To reduce the burden of repeated responses inherent in diary studies, only items with high face validity or high loadings in an exploratory factor analysis were selected for each variable (Machell, Kashdan, Short, & Nezlek, ; Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, ). Similar to Steger et al (), participants responded to each item on a separate rating scale ranging from 0 ( not at all ) to 100 ( absolutely ).…”

Daily Events for Clinical Couples: Examining Therapy Interventions, Positive Events, Arguments, and Exercise in the Beginning Stage of Therapy

“…Positive events occur frequently in people's life (Gable, Reis, Impett, & Asher, ) and are associated with higher relationship satisfaction in couples (Gable et al., ). Positive events also contribute to increased responsiveness from others, increased trust, and have a positive influence on people who are depressed (Machell, Kashdan, Short, & Nezlek, ; Nezlek & Gable, ; Reis et al., ). Furthermore, specific types of positive events such as expressing gratitude (Gordon, Impett, Kogan, Oveis, & Keltner, ; Williams & Bartlett, ), forgiving (Fincham, Hall, & Beach, ; Gordon, Hughes, Tomcik, Dixon, & Litzinger, ), expressing affection or intimacy (Debrot, Cook, Perrez, & Horn, ; Laurenceau, Barrett, & Rovine, ), and spending time together (Anderson, Van Ryzin, & Doherty, ) are positively related to relationship satisfaction.…”