A woman finishes a day that looked ordinary from the outside: a difficult conversation, a meal with someone she loves, and an hour spent repairing a problem at work. She did not complete a grand life mission. Yet she says the day mattered. What is she reporting? Laura King and Joshua Hicks’s 2021 review, The Science of Meaning in Life, approaches meaning as a subjective human experience that can be studied without pretending to settle the philosophical question of why the universe exists.
This guide explains the review’s three central facets, how researchers measure meaning and why a sense of purpose is only one part of the picture. It also considers what the evidence says about ordinary experiences and where popular advice outruns the studies. The article is a critical guide to a research review, not a prescription for a universal purpose.
A narrower, testable question
“What is the meaning of life?” can be a theological or philosophical inquiry. Psychological research asks a narrower question: to what extent does a person experience their life as meaningful, and what conditions accompany that experience? The distinction is not a dismissal of philosophy. It tells us what a survey or experiment can and cannot answer.
King and Hicks emphasize that meaning in life is often commonplace. People may find it in relationships, familiar routines, memories, values, useful work, play or moments that make the world feel intelligible. A meaningful life need not be dramatic. This matters because the popular picture of meaning as a single extraordinary calling may lead people to discount the connections and commitments already sustaining them.
Yet subjective meaning is not identical to happiness. A demanding act of care may be meaningful without being pleasant. A cheerful afternoon may feel enjoyable without answering a larger question about direction. Researchers should ask about each outcome separately. Collapsing meaning into positive mood makes it impossible to learn how the two interact.
Coherence: can the life be understood?
The first facet is comprehension or coherence. People need some sense that events, roles and experiences fit into an intelligible account. That does not mean every painful event has a good reason. It means a person can make sense of what happened sufficiently to orient themselves. A surprising loss, a move or a rupture can disturb coherence by making familiar expectations unreliable.
Coherence can be local as well as global. The woman in the opening scene understands why the conversation mattered and how the repair at work served others. She need not produce a complete theory of her life to experience a coherent day. Conversely, a person might maintain a lofty goal while daily events feel chaotic and disconnected. Purpose would then be present while comprehension is strained.
Researchers should avoid forcing coherence onto people after adversity. An invitation to tell a story can help some people, but a demand to find a “lesson” in harm can minimize the harm. The review’s psychological account describes a facet of meaning; it does not create an obligation to narrate suffering as beneficial.
Purpose: is there direction?
Purpose concerns aims and direction that organize action over time. A parent may work toward a child’s security; a scientist may pursue a question; a neighbor may commit to maintaining a shared garden. Purpose can be plural and revisable. It need not be one unchanging career label or a slogan that explains every choice.
Direction also differs from achievement. Someone can have a strong purpose during a period when progress is slow. Another can complete many tasks while feeling no connection between them and what matters. If a survey asks only whether goals are being met, it may miss the distinctive experience of acting toward a valued direction.
A longitudinal study by Hill and Turiano found that higher reported purpose predicted lower subsequent mortality risk across adult ages in its sample. This is an important association, but purpose was not randomly assigned. Health, resources, social support and other factors may affect both reported purpose and survival. The study does not license the claim that telling someone to “find a purpose” will extend their life by a specified amount.
Public institutions sometimes equate purpose with productivity. That is too narrow. A person who is ill, unemployed, retired or disabled may have commitments that are not monetized. Conversely, a job can be busy without feeling purposeful. The concept should be used to understand a person’s valued direction, not to rank their economic output.
Mattering: does the life count?
The third facet is existential mattering or significance: a sense that one’s life has importance and is not merely a sequence of events. Martela and Steger’s earlier paper articulated coherence, purpose and significance as distinguishable meanings of meaning in life. King and Hicks use a related three-facet account in their review. “Significance” here does not require fame or a world-changing achievement. It can arise from being valued, contributing to someone else or knowing that one’s presence makes a difference.
The facets can come apart. A person may understand the story of their life and know the next goal, yet feel invisible. Another may be cherished by others but unsure where to go next. A third may feel that their work matters but struggle to make sense of a recent disruption. These patterns call for different questions, not one generic instruction to “be more meaningful.”
There is a danger in using external approval as the only test of mattering. A person may matter without an audience that notices or says so. Research instruments measure a person’s felt significance; they do not adjudicate the objective value of a life. That distinction is especially important when a person is excluded by an institution or community. A low score should prompt curiosity about conditions, not a verdict about worth.
Presence and search are different
The Meaning in Life Questionnaire developed by Steger and colleagues separates the presence of meaning from the search for meaning. Presence concerns whether life feels meaningful now. Search concerns active exploration or desire for meaning. The two should not be treated as a simple before-and-after scale. A person can feel meaning and still search for more, or search intensely while facing uncertainty.
King and Hicks note that search sometimes correlates with lower wellbeing and rumination in cross-sectional data, yet some longitudinal daily evidence suggests that searching can precede increased presence of meaning. The interpretation depends on who is searching, why, and over what period. A single survey cannot tell whether a search is curious exploration, distress or both.
The scale also relies on language. “Meaning” and “purpose” have different connotations across communities and translations. People may interpret a question about meaning in religious, moral, relational or practical terms. Researchers should validate the instrument in the relevant population and avoid treating one score as a full account of an individual’s life.
Ordinary sources of meaning
The review draws together work on social relationships, positive experiences, identity, nostalgia, routine and future orientation. These are not independent recipes. They show that the experience of meaning can arise in the texture of daily life. A person may feel a stronger sense of coherence after a familiar ritual, purpose while helping a colleague and mattering when someone expresses gratitude.
Positive affect is particularly instructive. King and colleagues’ experiments found that positive mood can increase people’s judgments that life is meaningful under studied conditions. One interpretation is that mood provides information when people make a broad judgment about their lives. That does not mean every good mood reveals a permanent truth or that someone who is sad lacks a meaningful life. It shows that meaning reports are responsive to context.
Relationships can work through several routes. They may help people understand themselves, provide a shared project and communicate that they matter. The opening day’s difficult conversation could be meaningful precisely because the relationship matters, even though the conversation was unpleasant. This is why a measure of enjoyment alone cannot capture the experience.
Routine can also provide continuity. Repeated practices tell a person what kind of day they are in and who they are with. During disruption, losing those patterns may unsettle meaning. Rebuilding a small, chosen routine can support orientation. That is a plausible application of the review’s synthesis; it should not be sold as a clinically proven treatment for every person or crisis.
Meaning after disruption
When a life event violates expectations, people may ask why it happened and what comes next. Meaning making can involve changing an interpretation, changing a goal or acknowledging that some questions remain unresolved. Researchers must distinguish a person’s own process from an outsider’s demand that they “make the best of it.” A bereaved person may resist a neat account because the loss is genuinely disruptive.
Evidence about meaning after adversity is complex. Some people report growth; others report continuing distress; many report both. Retrospective claims of growth are not always evidence of objective change. Nor should a program promise that hardship will create purpose. A careful response offers support and time, and lets the person decide which interpretations fit.
Clinical uses of meaning-focused approaches require their own evidence, practitioner competence and consent. The Annual Review synthesizes psychological research on a construct. It is not a treatment manual. The Institute’s educational role is to clarify terms and evidence so that readers do not confuse an appealing existential phrase with a validated intervention.
Measurement and causal inference
Many studies ask people to rate how meaningful their life feels. Self-report is appropriate for a subjective experience, but it has limits. Responses can vary with mood, wording, context and the imagined comparison. A score can be useful for group research while concealing the particular sources of meaning in one person’s life.
Researchers can complement scales with daily reports, interviews and behavioral observations. Daily reports can show change within a person; interviews can reveal what participants mean by the term; observations can test whether a proposed source actually appears in their lives. None alone answers all questions. The method should match the claim.
Correlation is another limit. Meaning may support health and wellbeing; health and social opportunity may also support meaning. A longitudinal association improves on a single snapshot, but it does not remove every confound. An experiment that changes mood for a few minutes can establish something about an immediate judgment, not that it has transformed a life. The article’s conclusions should remain at the scale of the underlying evidence.
Group averages also conceal variation. A practice that feels meaningful to one person may feel obligatory to another. A volunteer role may offer contribution while also exposing someone to burnout. Respecting these differences is part of good measurement and good institutional design.
Questions for education and organizations
An educator may want learners to see why an activity matters. A useful question is whether students can connect a task to a coherent idea, a chosen aim or a contribution they value. The answer should be invited, not prescribed. A compulsory reflection demanding a “life purpose” can be intrusive, particularly when the course is about a small skill.
An organization may want work to feel meaningful. It should first examine whether the work is understandable, whether people have agency to pursue worthwhile goals and whether contributions are recognized. A motivational poster cannot repair a job designed around arbitrary tasks, humiliation or impossible demands. Meaning talk becomes manipulative if it is used to justify excessive labor without changing those conditions.
A community program can create opportunities for contribution and belonging, but should avoid treating attendance as proof of meaning. Ask participants what they found valuable and what felt burdensome. Keep the distinction between an Institute design proposal and a research finding clear. Any claim that a specific program improves meaning needs evaluation of that program.
What the evidence does not show
The 2021 review does not identify one purpose that everyone should adopt. It does not show that meaningful lives are always happy, productive or free of doubt. It does not demonstrate that a brief exercise can permanently raise meaning, or that meaning can be accurately judged from outside a person’s experience.
Its three facets are an analytical framework, not three mandatory boxes that every culture fills identically. Philosophical and spiritual traditions may ask questions that psychological scales do not address. Scientific humility here means using evidence for the question it can answer while leaving room for other forms of inquiry.
There is also no moral deficit in searching. Uncertainty can be painful, but it can be part of learning and change. A score is a prompt for inquiry, not a label to attach to a person. The review’s central contribution is to make an elusive experience more discussable without claiming to own its final definition.
Return to the ordinary day
Why did the woman’s day matter? She may have understood the problem she repaired, acted toward a valued commitment and felt that the conversation counted to another person. Those are coherence, purpose and mattering in an ordinary register. Another person could experience the same schedule differently, and that difference is exactly why subjective meaning is worth studying.
Meaning in life is not reserved for a dramatic mission. It can be present in how people understand their circumstances, direct their effort and recognize that their lives count. Good research helps distinguish those experiences and the conditions that support them; it cannot dictate what a particular person’s life must mean.
Research references
- King, L. A., & Hicks, J. A. (2021). The science of meaning in life. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, 561–584. View source
- Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 531–545. View source
- Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80–93. View source
- Hill, P. L., & Turiano, N. A. (2014). Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1482–1486. View source
- King, L. A., Hicks, J. A., Krull, J. L., & Del Gaiso, A. K. (2006). Positive affect and the experience of meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(1), 179–196. View source