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Authors
Affiliations
1 Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala, IN
Source
Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, Vol 3, No 2 (2012), Pagination: 212-216
Abstract
Meaning in life refers to the focus of the individual on the reason for one's existence, and the importance of goal-directed behavior and fulfillment in life. It is an important psychological motivation that is important to human welfare. Meaning in life is important to ascertain how people may become motivated to achieve all that they can achieve in day-to-day life experiences. It seems to be an indicator of a healthy and appreciated life and deserves greater attention in empirical investigations of human functioning. Feeling that one's life is meaningful is important to human functioning (Weinstein&Cleanthous, 1996; Zika&Chambertain, 1992). According to Frankl, meaning can be experienced in three ways, viz., through creative, attitudmal, and experiential values. While earlier work in this field has focused on psychological constructs such as creativity, Frankl's conceptualization brings one construct particularly to the forefront, viz., spiritual transcendence.The spiritual person emerges from the quest for meaning and purpose with confidence. He knows that life is meaningful and that one's own existence has purpose. The content of this meaning vanes from person to person, but the spiritually transcendent person fills the "existential vacuum" with the sense that life has meaning and purpose.These issues become particularly significant during late adulthood. As an individual moves into the middle years, the question of Ms existence becomes significant. According to Erikson, it is a crisis age in which either "generativity" or "stagnation" dominates. The individual who moves towards the attainment of meaning in life experiences generativity, while one who lacks meaning in life moves towards stagnation, i.e., perceiving their lives as coming to a standstill. Such individuals experience an existential vacuum and feel that their life is not meaningful. Hence, it was considered worthwhile to investigate the contribution of spiritual transcendence and generativity towards meaning in life in middle-aged people.The sample of the study comprised 100 adults in the age group of 35-45 years (middle-aged people). Participants were from different urban cities of Punjab in India, and were belonging to upper middle socio-economic status families. The participants were administered the Life Regard Index (LRI; Battista&Almond, 1973), Spiritual Transcendence scale - Short form (Piedmont, 1999a), and the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS; McAdams&de St. Aubin, 1992). In order to examine the relations among self-actualization, psychosocial maturity, empathy, spiritual transcendence, and meaning in life, inter-correlations were computed, and stepwise multiple regression analyses were applied. The results indicated that the main (positive) predictor of meaning in life at this stage of development seems to be spiritual transcendence, although generativity too, was found to positively predict meaning in life, though marginally. The results also indicated the scope of other variables in predicting meaning in life in late adulthood. Thus, the tendency towards "growth motivation" is a basic "essence" of life. Having a spiritually transcendent orientation may help adults view life from a more objective and larger perspective, making them "see" their "true" meaning or purpose. Hence, the present investigation is a significant step in understanding existential issues empincally, and has very far-reaching implications in the realm of motivation and transpersonal psychology]
Keywords
Meaning in Life, Spiritual Transcendence, Generativity.
