A Life Imbued with Significance
By Lydia Needy & Joshua Hicks
Texas A&M University. October 18, 2024.
Dr. Joshua Hicks discussing his research on the 4 pillars of a meaningful life.
Humans possess an inherent desire to believe that their lives are important. This quest for significance is a major motivator of our actions, as evidenced by the lengths we go to convince ourselves of our importance (Kruglanski et al., 2022). The conviction that our lives are significant is a key component of our overall sense of meaning. However, we seek not only sociocultural significance but also significance in our experiences. This experiential significance is just as crucial in shaping our perceptions of meaning. Below, we discuss each of these conceptions of significance and how they relate to our overall experience of meaning. We also discuss how future research could profitably examine the situational and dispositional predictors of prioritizing personal versus experiential significance as well as the potential drawbacks of significance seeking for personal and social well-being.
Sociocultural significance: Making your mark on the world
How can we contribute to the world in a manner that resonates with our sense of significance? When we envision someone who has objectively left a lasting mark, we often conjure images of those who have achieved the extraordinary, seeming almost superhuman. These achievements span various domains, from wealth to cultural influence, exemplified by iconic musicians like Taylor Swift, sports icons like Patrick Mahomes, and influential religious figures.
Clockwise from top left: Celebrities Taylor Swift and Patrick Mahomes, and a more localized community of friends.
While most of us may not attain the enduring legacy of public figures like Swift or Mahomes, we still crave a sense of significance in our lives. We often seek it through simpler means such as volunteering at a community center, caring for other sentient beings and the environment, or playing a meaningful role in others' lives. Both forms of significance – mattering in the grand scheme of things and mattering to close others – contribute to our sense of personal meaning. For instance, Guthrie et al. (2024) demonstrated that while achieving cosmic significance, such as leaving a lasting contribution, strongly predicts a sense of meaning in life, a more localized sense of importance—feeling valued by close others—also uniquely predicts feelings of meaning. Conversely, many of Kip Williams's (2007) groundbreaking studies on ostracism demonstrate that a lack of social acknowledgement, even from complete strangers, undermines one’s sense of significance and meaning. These findings suggest that a life of significance is within reach for each of us if we align our priorities accordingly.
Regardless of how one cultivates a sociocultural sense of significance, a profound and sustainable sense of meaning often arises from actions that are generative, contributing to the well-being and improvement of the world. For instance, individuals who engage in altruistic or community-focused activities tend to experience a deeper and more enduring sense of purpose than those who pursue self-oriented outcomes such as wealth (Martela & Ryan, 2016). While the latter may achieve a form of power or success, it is the former who are more likely to feel a lasting and fulfilling sense of meaning in their lives. Ultimately, the impact of one's actions on the broader community and world plays a crucial role in fostering a true sense of sociocultural significance.
Unfortunately, the sense that we matter to others and the world at large is often a deeply subjective judgment, influenced largely by social comparisons, mood states, and our current belief system. For instance, numerous individuals have made objectively significant contributions to society—think of Kurt Cobain or Leo Tolstoy—yet these same individuals struggled with believing their lives truly mattered to others. Even those who are genuinely valued by their loved ones can lose confidence in the significance of their existence.
Moreover, the perception of one's life as significant is often contingent on cultural values that can be arbitrary and may not necessarily align with what is inherently meaningful. While cultural norms and societal standards often dictate what is considered “objectively” significant, these benchmarks can be fleeting and vary widely across different contexts. As a result, what one culture or era deems important might be seen as trivial or irrelevant in another, further complicating the quest for a stable sense of sociocultural significance.
Experiential significance: Making life feel worthwhile
Feeling like you've made a difference in the world is a powerful way to experience a sense of meaning in life. However, there's another, more readily available form of significance that is equally worthwhile to pursue. This form of significance isn't necessarily about what you contribute to the world or the recognition you receive, but rather about how the world feels to you. We refer to this as experiential significance.
Many scholars have emphasized the importance of emotional experiences in finding meaning in life, as highlighted in Laura King’s (e.g., 2006) seminal work. Viktor Frankl (1985) also argued that valuing one’s experiences is one of the primary paths to meaning, a concept he called experiential value. This encompasses moments, such as enjoying a pleasant conversation with a friend, feeling captivated by a new song, or savoring delicious food. According to Frankl, these types of experiences are meaningful in and of themselves. This type of meaning is often self-transcendent, as it does not depend on how one’s personal actions “matter" in the moment. Instead, it is the significance that the individual derives from the situation that makes life feel worthwhile.
Our research has demonstrated that this type of significance plays a crucial role in a meaningful existence (Kim et al., 2022; see also Li et al., 2021). For instance, in a worldwide sample, we assessed how people coped with the Covid-19 pandemic and found that those who focused on appreciating their life experiences reported higher levels of meaning in life compared to those who did not. In a subsequent study, we further found that people’s most meaningful weekly experiences were high in experiential significance, and they often reported higher levels of global meaning when they felt a sense of experiential significance.
Experimental studies have also demonstrated that experiential significance plays a unique role in the experience of meaning in life (Kim et al., 2022). For example, in two studies, we had participants watch videos aimed at enhancing experiential significance (awe inspiring videos). In both studies we found the manipulation influenced reports of experiential significance and this, in turn, had an influence on people’s perceptions that their life had meaning. Notably, the relationship between experiential significance and meaning remained robust even after controlling for how much people felt their lives mattered to others, as well as other known primary contributors to meaning, such as having satisfying goals and a sense of coherence in life. This suggests that experiential significance is a unique and powerful predictor of meaning in life.
Kim et al., (2022) found that an awe induction was associated with experiential appreciation which was then associated with perceived meaning in life, above and beyond similar associations with mattering, purpose, and coherence.
While studies assessing the distinctive role of experiential significance in shaping the experience of meaning in life have emerged only recently, the literature provides abundant indirect evidence for this relation. For example, emotional experiences such as feeling happy, curious, awe, or savoring one’s present experience are all linked to meaning in life. These emotional experiences likely do so not by making one feel they are significant, but because those emotions give us the momentary feeling that life itself is worthwhile.
Cognitively oriented perspectives, such as mental time travel or nostalgia, may also be connected to the sense of meaning in life through their association with experiential significance. For instance, nostalgia is believed to enhance one's sense of meaning by fostering self-continuity. While evidence supports this view, reminiscing about these cherished experiences likely also elicits a retrospective feeling of experiential significance, reinforcing the belief that life is meaningful.
Like our perception of our significance to others, our ability to detect significance in our experiences is not always within our control. It is often easy to find significance in some experience, such as visiting a natural wonder, witnessing unexpected acts of kindness, or seeing the genuine smile of a child. However, even these experiences can go unappreciated. Depression or a cynical nature can blur and blunt the beauty found in all aspects of life, including these types of experiences. Likewise, mere distraction interferes with our ability to observe numerous things in our environment, including the intrinsically valuable ones. This underscores the importance of occasionally setting aside our phones and tablets to fully appreciate what truly matters and makes life worth living.
The value of both sociocultural and experiential significance
Both mattering to others and experiential significance are important and complement each other; however, there might be times when one is more important than the other. For instance, advancing age may diminish one’s sense of sociocultural significance as the pursuit of traditional accolades (e.g., job promotion) fades. Moreover, within certain societal contexts like the United States, older individuals are sometimes marginalized, perceived merely as diminishing entities rather than as individuals who continue to grow and contribute. Despite this, these people can still cultivate experiential significance through the simple joys of everyday life – such as conversing with friends, caring for family members, or immersing themselves in new hobbies – thereby sustaining their sense that life is worthwhile.
On the contrary, there are occasions when individuals might find their experiential significance diminished, thus amplifying the importance of their sociocultural significance. This situation could arise during episodes of depression, when anhedonia prevents individuals from finding pleasure in any of their experiences. In such moments, it may be helpful for these individuals to reflect on past achievements that held sociocultural significance to them. By making these accomplishments salient, they may reaffirm their life is still meaningful.
A possible avenue for future researchers is to consider how different conceptualizations of the self impact both sociocultural and experiential significance. Individuals with independent self-construals, which view the self as an autonomous and distinct entity (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), may be more likely to focus on their own accomplishments and, in turn, increase their perceived sociocultural significance. Conversely, individuals with interdependent self-construals–who view the self as being connected to others–may place less emphasis on personal accomplishments and more on the experiential significance of shared experiences within their relationships or collective groups. Additionally, those with interdependent self-construals might integrate the accomplishments of close others into their own sense of sociocultural significance, as these relationships are deeply intertwined with their self-concept. Future research ought to explore diverse, cross-cultural samples to gain a deeper understanding of the distinctions between sociocultural and experiential significance.
Future research should also experimentally explore how manipulations of sociocultural and experiential significance interact with various types of individual differences to predict well-being. For instance, providing individuals with false feedback that they have contributed more to society than their peers could theoretically enhance their sense of meaning in life. This effect might be amplified for those who highly value social validation (e.g., narcissists) compared to those who exhibit high levels of humility.
Similarly, experiential significance could be manipulated by having participants engage with an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience. This manipulation would be expected to influence their belief that life is meaningful, potentially having a stronger impact on individuals who are more present-focused, while being less effective for those prone to frequent mind wandering, for example.
The importance of balance in our search for significance
It's worth noting that individuals can become excessively fixated on chasing sociocultural significance, to the point in which it becomes more of a quest for legacy. This inclination is characterized by an intense desire for remembrance and widespread recognition. For such individuals, a meaningful existence revolves around the pursuit of symbolic immortality and influence, often disregarding its effects on others. It prompts reflection on whether these individuals genuinely feel significant – moments in which their life momentarily feels worthwhile – despite their high degree of validation-seeking behavior.
In a similar vein to the pursuit of happiness, excessively seeking sociocultural significance might inadvertently diminish one’s capacity to acknowledge opportunities for experiential significance around them. Ironically, those who strive to maximize their happiness often hinder their actual experience of happiness, partly due to the disappointment that arises when their feelings fail to meet expectations (Mauss et al., 2011). This pattern could similarly apply to individuals overly fixated on sociocultural significance.
Similarly, there can be drawbacks to excessively pursuing experiential significance. For example, some individuals might overly focus on hedonic, self-interested goals, such as an addict seeking a high as a means of escaping negative feelings. While getting high may provide a temporary sense of experiential value, this narrow focus often leads to devaluing other forms of significance, and may result in estrangement from close others and unemployment (Pickard, 2021).
Summary
Humans strive to believe that their lives matter to others and that their experiences feel important. The former pertains to sociocultural significance, which involves a subjective evaluation of one's contributions to and impact on the world. This encompasses how we perceive others' evaluations of our roles and actions. The latter pertains to the emotional meaning found in our daily experiences, emphasizing how deeply and personally fulfilling these moments feel to us.
While this work provides a brief overview, we hope that empirical research will further clarify the distinctions between sociocultural and experiential significance. Future studies should explore how experiences of both types of significance might vary based on factors such as one’s view of the self, cultural background, and individual differences like depression or narcissism. Ultimately, emerging research technologies, such as immersive VR, could prove effective in manipulating complex concepts like experiential significance, offering simulations that closely mimic real-world contexts.
These two concepts of significance, though often conflated in research and everyday conversation, represent distinct yet complementary pathways to making life feel worthwhile. Sociocultural significance provides external validation and a sense of being valued by others, while experiential significance offers internal satisfaction and emotional fulfillment. Both types of significance are crucial for cultivating a meaningful and fulfilling existence.
Lydia Needy earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Missouri State University, double majoring in Philosophy and Psychology. She went on to earn a Master of Science degree in Experimental Psychology with a Graduate Certificate in Statistics and Research Design. She is now a PhD student in the Social and Personality Psychology program at Texas A&M University, working with Dr. Joshua Hicks. She is interested in topics related to authenticity and meaning in life, such as better understand where feelings of authenticity (i.e., embracing one’s true self) come from and the relationships between perceived authenticity, meaning in life, and well-being. Specifically, she’s interested in the experiences of authenticity, self-knowledge, and meaning among individuals with concealable stigmatized identities and how the act of concealing aspects of one's identity shapes perceptions of self-knowledge and the experience of authenticity..
Joshua Hicks is a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. He earned his Ph.D. in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of Missouri. His research centers on how individuals make sense of themselves and the world around them, and how this understanding shapes their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Specifically, he investigates the causes and consequences of experiences related to meaning in life, authenticity, true self-knowledge, self-alienation, perceptions of free will, and mortality awareness.