Can Helping Others Help You Find
Meaning in Life?
New research is finding that being kind and giving
to others can make our lives feel more meaningful.
The idea that helping others is part of a
meaningful life has been around for thousands of years. Aristotle wrote that
finding happiness and fulfillment is achieved “by loving rather than in being
loved.” According to the psychologist Carol Ryff, who reviewed the writings of
numerous philosophers throughout history, relationships with others are “a central feature of a positive,
well-lived life.”
Yet today many of us seem to be struggling to
find meaning by gathering up achievements, spending so much time at work that
we’re cut off from other people.
Are we headed down the wrong path? New
research is providing more and more evidence that kind and helpful behavior
causes us to feel that our lives are meaningful, and discovering what we can do
to reap those benefits.
Relationships and the meaningful life
Often, psychologists have distinguished
between two types of well-being: hedonic well-being (a sense
of happiness) and eudaimonic well-being (a sense of meaning
and purpose). Although happiness and meaning overlap significantly, researchers
suspected that helping others is especially crucial to developing a sense of
meaning.
A recent study by Roy Baumeister at Florida State University
sought to investigate this and other differences between happiness and meaning.
In a survey of over 300 participants, the researchers looked for traits and
behaviors that were related to happiness (but not meaningfulness) and vice
versa. The researchers found that having strong social connections was
important for both happiness and meaningfulness. However, helping others in
need and identifying oneself as a “giver” in relationships were related to
meaning alone.
Baumeister points out that a meaningful life
is different for everyone (since the cultural messages we have been exposed to
can impact what we see as meaningful). However, the research on meaning in life
points to one factor that appears to be important for all of us: developing
high-quality relationships.
Does
helping promote a sense of meaning?
But does behaving in a kind
and helpful way (“prosocially”) actually cause us to feel that
our lives have more meaning? While it may seem intuitive that helping others
goes along with a meaningful life, it’s possible to imagine a variety of
different explanations for this: Perhaps those who feel like their lives have
meaning are more motivated to help others, or perhaps some other factor (for
example, being religious) causes people to be helpful and experience more
meaning in their life.
A recent article published in The Journal of Positive
Psychology by Daryl Van Tongeren and his
colleagues sought to examine this relationship. In a preliminary study, the
researchers asked over 400 participants to report on how frequently they engage
in different altruistic behaviors (such as volunteering) and how meaningful
their life feels. Participants who were more altruistic reported a greater
sense of purpose and meaning in their lives.
In a second study, the researchers sought to
assess whether expressing gratitude, which is considered a prosocial emotion, could actually cause participants
to report a greater sense of meaning. In this study, some participants wrote
letters of gratitude to someone who had impacted their lives, while some
participants wrote about other topics. The researchers found that participants
who wrote gratitude letters subsequently reported that their lives were more
meaningful than did other participants. Importantly, this study addresses the
issue of causality; since participants were randomly assigned to write about
gratitude or other topics, it appears that expressing a prosocial emotion
actually increased their sense of purpose.
Why
does helping make life more meaningful?
According to Van Tongeren, engaging in
altruistic acts may allow us to find fulfillment because it improves our
relationships. To test out this idea, the researchers asked participants about
their prosocial behavior, meaning in life, and level of relationship
satisfaction. They found that prosocial behavior and meaning in life were
linked, and that relationship satisfaction—in other words, the quality of
people’s relationships—partially accounted for that link.
Another factor that might come into play is
detailed in a 2010 study published in The Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology.
According to this article, when we choose to engage in prosocial actions, it
helps to meet our basic psychological needs: for autonomy (feeling that we have
freely chosen our actions), competence (feeling that we are good and capable),
and relatedness (feeling close to others).
In one study testing this idea, participants
were either allowed to choose to give money to someone else in the study, or
told by the researchers how much money to give. For participants who freely
chose how much to give (although not for participants who were told how much to
give), giving more money was related to higher well-being and to feeling that
their psychological needs were met. Importantly, that feeling accounted for the
link between giving and well-being, suggesting that giving may improve
well-being because it helps us meet our psychological needs.
Taken together, these two studies suggest
that helping others is beneficial because it fulfills basic human needs—and
that altruism may be especially important for strengthening our relationships
and connecting us with others.
How to
increase your sense of meaning
The research described above suggests that
giving helps us feel more connected to others, which imbues our lives with a
sense of meaning. Do you want to live a more meaningful life? The suggestions
below can help you take the first steps.
·
Start small. You don’t need to begin with grand gestures; even
small, everyday behaviors can have an impact on others and on your own sense of
well-being. For example, in a study published in Science, spending just five dollars on someone else led to
boosts in happiness. The Eliciting
Altruism practice includes strategies for
starting a habit of kindness and generosity, such as reminding yourself of your
connections to others and identifying with individuals who may need your help.
·
Make your helping count. It turns out that not all types of giving have the
same effects on us. The Making Giving
Feel Good practice offers strategies for how to
help others in a way that boosts your own sense of happiness and well-being. In
particular, helping others can be especially effective when you can see the
specific impact that your actions have.
·
Take time to thank others. As the research presented here has shown,
expressing gratitude towards others can be a prosocial act, too. When others
take time to do something nice for you, making them feel appreciated can help
build your relationship with them and make your life more meaningful. This exercise offers suggestions for how to write a Gratitude
Letter like the ones in Van Tongeren’s study.
Recent research has provided evidence to
support the idea that helping others goes hand in hand with meaningfulness.
It’s not just that people who have already found their purpose in life enjoy
giving back. Instead, helping others can actually create the
sense of meaning we’re seeking. Rather than ruminating on what makes our life
worthwhile as we work toward burnout, we can find the answer outside ourselves,
in human connection.
By Elizabeth Hopper
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_helping_others_help_you_find_meaning_in_life?utm_source=GG+Newsletter+Feb+17+2016&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+Feb+17+2016&utm_medium=email
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