Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
PLoS One. 2021 Oct 25;16(10):e0258769. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258769. eCollection 2021.
The study of meaning in life has largely centered on its relationship with personal well-being, while a focus on how meaning is related to enhancing the well-being of others has received less research attention. Although searching for meaning may imply lower personal well-being, we find that meaning-seekers are more motivated to perform costly prosocial actions for the sake of others' well-being, given the perceived meaningfulness of these behaviors. Studies 1-4 (N = 780) show that meaning-seeking correlates with the motivation to engage in a range of costly prosocial behaviors. Meaning-seeking is further shown to be distinct from pursuing happiness in its relationship with costly prosociality (Study 2 & 3) and to share a stronger association with high-cost than low-cost prosociality (Study 3 & 4). Study 5 (N = 370; pre-registered) further shows that the search for meaning is related to costly prosocial behavior in the recent past. While our studies are cross-sectional, the pattern of findings suggests that seeking meaning (rather than happiness) may play an important role in motivating altruistic tendencies.
人生意义的研究主要集中在其与个人幸福感的关系上，而关注意义如何有助于增强他人的幸福感的研究则较少受到关注。虽然寻找意义可能意味着个人幸福感较低，但我们发现，鉴于这些行为的意义感知，意义寻求者更有动力为他人的幸福而进行代价高昂的亲社会行为。研究 1-4（N=780）表明，意义寻求与一系列代价高昂的亲社会行为的动机相关。研究 2 和 3 表明，与追求幸福相比，意义寻求与代价高昂的亲社会性存在不同的关系，研究 3 和 4 表明，意义寻求与高代价亲社会性的关联比低代价亲社会性更强。研究 5（N=370；预先注册）进一步表明，寻找意义与最近的代价高昂的亲社会行为有关。虽然我们的研究是横断面的，但研究结果表明，寻求意义（而不是幸福）可能在激发利他倾向方面发挥重要作用。
