Meaning in Life During Stressful Times

Samantha Dorazio, Nicholas Liddick, Irene Howard, Ximena Leon, Genesis Alvarez, and Leigh Ann Vaughn

Introduction Method
Meaning in life is a subjective judgement that one’s life has a purpose.
Being in a good mood can contribute to feeling that life is meaningful (King, ● Participants: 153 Ithaca College students, who participated for extra credit in
Heintzelman, & Ward, 2016), and so can feeling that one has support of needs their psychology classes.
for competence, relatedness (feeling close to others), and autonomy (feeling
free to make choices; Trent & King, 2010). Self-determination theory (Deci & ● Quasi-independent variable: time of participation
Ryan, 2000) proposes that these needs are fundamental human requirements, A: Spring 2016 – 3 weeks before the end of classes (n = 18)
and that the more these needs are satisfied, the happier and more purposeful B: Spring 2016 – 2 weeks before the end of classes (n = 35)
people feel they are. C: Spring 2016 – Last week of classes (n = 36)
D: 2016 presidential election night – 4:30pm to 8:00pm (n = 14)
People are flexible in how they make meaning-in-life judgments, and they E: 2016 presidential election night – 8:00pm to 12:30am (n = 11)
can use information in a way that is biased toward concluding that life is F: 2016 election, next day – 8:00am to 12:00pm (n = 13)
meaningful (King et al., 2016). For example, inducing participants to think G: 2016 election, next day – 12:00pm to 4:00pm (n = 12)
about loneliness has been found to reduce how much they base meaning-in-life H: 2016 election, next day – 4:00pm to 9:00pm (n = 14)
judgments on relationships (Hicks, Schlegel, & King, 2010).
● DVs: (Cronbach’s alphas for the three scales ranged from .88 to .91.)
When making judgments about meaning in life during stressful events, Mood index: Emmons Mood Indicator (Diener & Emmons, 1984)
people may rely less on mood than other sources of information. Experiencing Need-support index: Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs
a stressful event could lower mood. However, if the event does not lower (Sheldon & Hilpert, 2012)
support for relatedness, competence or autonomy, people could base meaning- Meaning in life index: Meaning in Life – Purpose subscale (Steger,
in-life judgments more on their experienced support of these needs than on Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler 2006)
their mood.
Results
In the current research, we examined how mood, need support, and meaning ● One-way ANOVAs examining effects of time of participation:
in life varied during two stressful events: the last three weeks of spring Significant effect on mood, F(5, 147) = 3.56, p = .005.
No significant effect on need support, F(5, 147) = 1.40, p = .229.
semester, as well as the night and they day after the 2016 presidential election.
No significant effect on meaning in life, F(7, 145) = 0.50, p = .839.
Additionally, we examined how mood and need support related to meaning in
life when controlling for the relationships between these variables. ● Multiple regression predicting meaning in life:
Need support was a strong predictor (β = .57, t = 7.84, p < .001), and
Hypotheses mood was a much weaker predictor (β = .15, t = 2.10, p = .038).
● Mood will be more variable than either meaning in life or need support.
● There will be a stronger relationship between meaning in life and need
Discussion
support than between meaning in life and mood. Our results supported our hypothesis that people would base judgements of
meaning in life more on need support than mood in these stressful events. This
finding is consistent with research suggesting that that people base meaning-in-
life judgments on information that the supports the conclusion that their lives are
meaningful (Hicks et al., 2010).

Our research only focused on stressful events, which showed that mood varied
significantly within those time periods, meanwhile need support and meaning in
life did not. Future research could examine whether people are more likely to
base meaning-in-life judgments on mood in extremely positive situations.

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