Ultimate, Provisional, and Personal Meaning of Life: Differences and Common Ground

Abstract

Building on Viktor Frankl's clinical approach of Logotherapy and the works of subsequent theoreticians, three types of meaning of life were theoretically derived and empirically investigated, Ultimate, Provisional, and Personal meaning. These types were characterized, first, by the amount of agreement of subjects, second, by sources of Life Meaning, which were assessed by content analyses, third, by correlations, and fourth by prediction with ratings of important life concepts from the domains of Well-being, Religiosity, and Prosocial Behavior. 192 German adults, 45 men and 147 women, whose M age was 31.6 yr. (SD = 11.9), participated. Analysis indicated different sources for the Ultimate meaning compared with the other meaning types, which seem to display more similarities with each other. Other important life concepts, such as Belief, Harmony, Happiness, and Human Goodness were related to the investigated types of meaning of life. Some implications for clinical applications, research perspectives, and Positive Psychology are discussed.

Looking forward to helping: The effects of prospection on prosocial intentions and behavior

“…Supporting this notion, highly prosocial children have more friends and report better friendship quality than less prosocial children (Clark & Ladd, ). These relationships can provide psychosocial resources such as emotional support (Taylor, ) and can contribute to a meaningful life (Auhagen & Holub, ).…”

Systematic review of meaning in life assessment instruments

“…In the group of multidimensional nomothetic instruments, 3/23 have low scores , 12/23 medium scores and 8/23 high scores . In the group of idiographic instruments, 3/11 have low scores , 6/11 medium scores and 2/11 high scores .…”

“…Twenty‐five of these are unidimensional (Table ), whereas 23 instruments are multidimensional (Table ). Eleven instruments use an idiographic approach (Table ). All instruments were developed for self‐completion.…”

Inducing motivational harmony to increase attitudes and intentions to register as an organ donor and engage in general prosocial behavior

“…The positive correlation between prosocial behavior and motivational harmony identified by Cornwell and colleagues (2020) is in line with other literature indicating a correlation between well-being and prosocial behavior. For example, correlational studies indicate that prosocial behavior is associated with positive emotions (Lyubomirsky et al, 2005), life satisfaction (Caprara & Steca, 2005;Kahana et al, 2013), and a sense of meaning (Auhagen & Holub, 2006). In addition to being correlated, there is also evidence that there is a bi-directional causal relationship between prosocial behavior and well-being.…”