1University of Missouri, Columbia, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2014 May;18(2):153-67. doi: 10.1177/1088868313518487. Epub 2014 Feb 5.
The desire for meaning is recognized as a central human motive. Yet, knowing that people want meaning does not explain its function. What adaptive problem does this experience solve? Drawing on the feelings-as-information hypothesis, we propose that the feeling of meaning provides information about the presence of reliable patterns and coherence in the environment, information that is not provided by affect. We review research demonstrating that manipulations of stimulus coherence influence subjective reports of meaning in life but not affect. We demonstrate that manipulations that foster an associative mindset enhance meaning. The meaning-as-information perspective embeds meaning in a network of foundational functions including associative learning, perception, cognition, and neural processing. This approach challenges assumptions about meaning, including its motivational appeal, the roles of expectancies and novelty in this experience, and the notion that meaning is inherently constructed. Implications for constructed meaning and existential meanings are discussed.
对意义的渴望被认为是人类的一个核心动机。然而，仅仅知道人们想要意义，并不能解释它的功能。这种体验解决了什么适应性问题？受“感觉即信息”假说的启发，我们提出，意义感提供了关于环境中可靠模式和连贯性存在的信息，而这些信息是情感所无法提供的。我们回顾了研究表明，刺激连贯性的操纵会影响对生活意义的主观报告，但不会影响情感。我们证明，促进联想思维的操作可以增强意义感。意义即信息的观点将意义嵌入到包括联想学习、感知、认知和神经处理在内的基础功能网络中。这种方法挑战了关于意义的假设，包括其动机吸引力、期望和新奇感在这种体验中的作用，以及意义是内在构建的观点。讨论了对构建意义和存在意义的影响。
