Pondering Purpose: The Search for Meaning in Life as Motivated Social Cognition

The search for meaning in life has been considered a fundamental human motivation (Frankl, 1963). Although research has pointed toward the importance of the search for meaning in life, the basic processes through which it emerges remain unclear. Because the search for meaning entails schema formation in which one connects individual experiences into a coherent framework (Steger, Oishi, & Kesebir, 2011), and abstract thought instigates the organization of information into such knowledge structures (Trope & Liberman, 2010), we predicted that abstract thought would increase the search for meaning in life. Moreover, we predicted that figuratively removing oneself from the here and now would also heighten the search for meaning. Importantly, we predicted that because schema formation is effortful (Shallice & Burgess, 1996), abstract thought and psychological distance would increase the search for meaning to a greater extent when willingness to exert effort is high rather than low. Nine experiments corroborated these predictions, supporting a view of the search for meaning as motivated social cognition

THE POWER OF SAYING “I’M SORRY”: THE INFLUENCE OF APOLOGIES ON OFFENDERS’ HEALTH BEHAVIORS AND CARDIOVASCULAR STRESS REACTIVITY AND RECOVERY

Hurting others can lead to several undesirable consequences, including an increase in offenders’ negative emotions (e.g., guilt and shame) and damage to their social relationships. Because negative emotions and strained social relationships may confer risk for cardiovascular disease, I reasoned that hurting others—especially if done repeatedly—might affect behavioral and biological correlates of cardiovascular health. Importantly, offenders can apologize to their victim to attenuate the negative consequences of their actions. Consequently, apologies may decrease negative emotions and repair one’s relationship with the victim. On this basis, I tested whether offering an apology might influence offenders’ behavioral and biological correlates of cardiovascular health. I focused on offenders’ health behaviors and cardiovascular stress reactivity and recovery and tested whether apologizing (compared to ruminating and control) influenced these outcomes directly as well as indirectly through negative emotions and perceived forgiveness from their victim. Three studies (N = 1,046) yielded limited support for my predictions. Specifically, while Study 1 found that apologizing (vs. the comparison conditions) indirectly improved offenders’ intended health behaviors by decreasing their feelings of shame, Studies 2 and 3 did not replicate this effect for intended or actual health behaviors. Regarding cardiovascular reactivity and recovery, Study 3 showed that while apologizing sometimes led to presumably beneficial patterns of autonomic activity compared to rumination (e.g., significantly better heart rate recovery), it did not lead to any presumably beneficial patterns of autonomic activity compared to self-distraction and sometimes even led to worse such patterns compared to self-distraction (e.g., marginally poorer systolic blood pressure recovery). Implications for studying apologies’ potential influence on offenders’ behavioral and biological correlates of cardiovascular risk are discussed, as are potential limitations in the current methodology and plausible boundary conditions that might moderate the potential effect of apologizing on these outcomes