Authenticity, Meaning in Life, and Life Satisfaction: A Multicomponent Investigation of Relationships at the Trait and State Levels

When meaning in life protects against fear of death: The moderating role of self-alienation

OBJECTIVE

A sense of meaning in life (MIL) is thought to help protect people against experiencing explicit anxiety about death. However, the experience of meaning is complex and subjective and may relate to death anxiety in nuanced ways. We examine how self-alienation-a feeling of not knowing/being disconnected from one's self-might moderate the relationship between MIL and death anxiety.

METHOD

Across five studies, we tested the hypothesis that MIL would negatively predict death anxiety more strongly for people relatively low in self-alienation. These studies were similar in design and included exploratory, confirmatory, and pre-registered tests.

RESULTS

A meta-regression across our five studies (N = 2001) provided clear evidence that MIL was most strongly associated with lower death anxiety at low self-alienation. We also observed that MIL was positively associated with death anxiety at high self-alienation. These effects were consistent in direction but inconsistent in strength.

CONCLUSIONS

We interpreted these results as evidence that MIL is existentially protective when experienced in combination with a relatively strong, clear, and connected sense of self. In contrast, MIL may be existentially problematic when people feel relatively unaware and disconnected from themselves. These findings align with aspects of terror management theory and highlight the potentially complex ways that MIL might relate to death anxiety.

The SAFE Model: State Authenticity as a Function of Three Types of Fit

The SAFE model asserts that state authenticity stems from three types of fit to the environment. Across two studies of university students, we validated instruments measuring self-concept, goal, and social fit as unique predictors of state authenticity. In Study 1 (N = 969), relationships between fit and state authenticity were robust to controlling for conceptually similar and distinct variables. Using experience sampling methodology, Study 2 (N = 269) provided evidence that fit and authenticity co-vary at the state (i.e., within-person) level, controlling for between-person effects. Momentary variation in each fit type predicted greater state authenticity, willingness to return to the situation, and state attachment to one's university. Each fit type was also predicted by distinct contextual features (e.g., location, activity, company). Supporting a theorized link to cognitive fluency, situations eliciting self-concept fit elicited higher working memory capacity and lower emotional burnout. We discuss the implications of fit in educational contexts.

Non-Psychiatric Treatment Refusal in Patients with Depression: How Should Surrogate Decision-Makers Represent the Patient's Authentic Wishes?

Patients with mental illness, and depression in particular, present clinicians and surrogate decision-makers with complex ethical dilemmas when they refuse life-sustaining non-psychiatric treatment. When treatment rejection is at variance with the beliefs and preferences that could be expected based on their premorbid or "authentic" self, their capacity to make these decisions may be called into question. If capacity cannot be demonstrated, medical decisions fall to surrogates who are usually advised to decide based on a substituted judgment standard or, when that is not possible, best interest. We propose that in cases where the patient meets the widely accepted cognitive criteria for capacity but is making decisions that appear inauthentic, the surrogate may best uphold patient autonomy by following a "restorative representation" model. We see restorative representation as a subset of substituted judgement in which the decision-maker retains responsibility for deciding as the patient would have, but discerns the decision their "truest self" would make, rather than inferring their current wishes, which are directly influenced by illness. Here we present a case in which the patient's treatment refusal and previously undiagnosed depression led to difficulty determining the patient's authentic wishes and placed a distressing burden on the surrogate decision-maker. We use this case to examine how clinicians and ethicists might better advise surrogates who find themselves making these clinically and emotionally challenging decisions.

Can there be overly meaningful lives? Conflicts between meaning in life and other values

This is a philosophical paper that heeds psychological work on meaning in life, and hopes to acquaint both psychologists and philosophers more with each other’s work and enhance a dialogue between them. Many works on meaning in life in philosophy and in psychology have already focused on the relations between meaning in life and specific values such as happiness (subjective wellbeing), authenticity, morality, knowledge, and artistic creation. This paper discusses the general structure of the relation between both objective and subjective meaning in life and other values, and emphasizes ways in which such values sometimes conflict with rather than enhance objective or subjective meaning in life. The paper argues that, because of such conflicts, there are cases in which we should refrain from augmenting the objective or subjective meaning in our lives and even seek to decrease it; there can be overly meaningful lives. The paper concludes with some practical implications of this discussion.