From: drarwingnuttephd@gmail.com   
      
   Psychologist explores how meaningfulness cultivates well-being   
      
   Oct 23, Psychology & Psychiatry   
        
      
   Time and money spent on meaningful choices is often associated with lasting   
   positive consequences, according to a Stanford professor.   
      
      
   Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist at Stanford Graduate School of Business,   
   recently organized a collection of research papers on meaningfulness for the   
   Journal of Consumer Research. In her own research, Aaker, the General Atlantic   
   Professor of    
   Marketing, has explored how happiness is often misunderstood and how happiness   
   and meaningfulness lead to different choices. Stanford News Service recently   
   interviewed her on this topic:    
      
   Can you talk about your own research on happiness and meaningfulness?      
      
   My research with colleagues Cassie Mogilner and Sep Kamvar suggests that the   
   meaning of happiness shifts in systematic ways over the life course. This   
   finding is important for two reasons. First, it suggests the meaning of   
   happiness is dynamic, perhaps    
   more than people think. Second, guiding people's choices is often the   
   question, "What would make me happy?" Our research shows that the answer to   
   that question changes systematically, and the answer influences the choices   
   people make. When people are    
   making choices guided by the desire to feel happy, the feeling of pleasure   
   that they experience when they make the choice may be fleeting. From a   
   research perspective, we explored what choices are associated with a more   
   lasting sense of well-being.    
   Research suggests that choices guided by meaningfulness – in the area of   
   time and money – are often associated with more lasting positive   
   consequences.    
      
   How is meaningfulness distinct from happiness?    
      
   One distinction between happiness and meaningfulness is self-vs.-other   
   orientation. In general, people leading happy (but not necessarily meaningful)   
   lives derive joy from receiving benefits from others.  In contrast, people   
   leading meaningful (but not    
   necessarily happy) lives experience joy from giving to others. Meaning   
   transcends the self while happiness focuses on giving the self what it wants.    
      
   Consider parenting: studies show that parenting is often associated with a   
   high degree of meaningfulness, but it is not always fun or even pleasurable.    
   (Of course this is not the case with me. Or at least don't share this   
   interview with my children).       
       
      
   What do you mean by meaningful choices?    
      
   Whereas meaningful choices are often not pleasurable to make, and indeed may   
   come at a cost or involve pain, they are often associated with a larger   
   purpose.  The consequences of the choices you make when guided by a desire for   
   meaningfulness (as opposed    
   to happiness) are often longer lasting. What is interesting is the possibility   
   that the choices we make when aiming for happiness might be fundamentally   
   different than the ones we make when aiming for meaningfulness.    
      
   For example, you often hear parents say, "I just want my children to be   
   happy," and we are making decisions based on that wish. It is unusual to hear:   
   "I just want my children's lives to be meaningful." Yet that's what most of us   
   seem to want for    
   ourselves.  This insight was one reason we started empirically exploring the   
   choices fueled by the pursuit of meaning vs. happiness.     
      
   What are the characteristics of meaningful choices?    
      
   The characteristics of meaningful choices include (1) looking backwards –   
   for example, choices that protect special memories; (2) looking forward –   
   choices that allow individuals to collect experiences in their life; and (3)   
   looking outward –    
   choices that enhance the well-being of others and the world.      
      
   You say that people may make choices that protect special memories. Why?      
      
   Research by Gal Zauberman, Rebecca Ratner and B. Kyu Kim shows that people   
   tend to avoid situations when they believe that the situation will threaten a   
   special memory – even if the situation is pleasurable. For example, you   
   might choose to forgo a    
   positive experience if it threatens to "overwrite" a memory that is important   
   to you. Further, when people believe that future events might interfere with   
   their ability to remember earlier special experiences, they acquire memory   
   cues so as to savor the    
   past experience. Thus, the choices made are meaningful in how they protect   
   special memories. Also, meaningful choices often connect you to the future as   
   well. For example, research by Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz show that people   
   make choices to use time    
   productively and collect new unique experiences – even when those   
   experiences are aversive or painful.  Those unique experiences build their   
   "experiential CV."    
      
   What types of experiences contribute to a sense of self and well-being as one   
   ages?    
      
   In general, experiences can be grouped into one of two categories:  the   
   extraordinary, or that which goes beyond the realm of everyday life; or the   
   ordinary, which are those experiences that make up everyday life but are often   
   overlooked when the future    
   seems boundless. Whereas sometimes people are making choices that allow them   
   to acquire a bucket list of "extraordinary" experiences, other times exist   
   where mundane experiences are more meaningful. For example, Amit Bhattacharjee   
   and Cassie Mogilner ran    
   eight studies showing that although extraordinary experiences are valuable at   
   earlier stages of life, mundane ordinary experiences increasingly contribute   
   to a sense of self and well-being as one ages.    
      
   What about helping others and the world?    
      
   One of the most important differences between choices made when people are   
   guided by the desire for meaningfulness vs. happiness is the degree to which   
   the choice might benefit others and the world.  For example, Noah Goldstein   
   and his colleagues ran two    
   field studies that show how consumers engage in important, real‐world   
   decisions to reduce resource consumption and enable environmental   
   conservation. These choices are meaningful in that they promote pro-social and   
   pro-environmental behaviors.     
      
   Finally, the way we think about happiness and meaningfulness is conceptually   
   and practically important.  In other words, how people choose to spend their   
   time and money when motivated by the question, "What would make me happy?" vs.   
   "What would be    
   meaningful?" may differ. Identifying those conditions is worthy of future   
   research, and the work on meaningful choices curated at the Journal of   
   Consumer Research is an important step in that direction.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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