| Meaning in life is an ongoing theme because the human pursues meaning in life across his whole life.Meaning in life is besides a puzzling academic undertaking,also a daily topic,that exceeds human understanding although it emerges as one of his basic needs.The human request for his own unique sense of meaning links to his efforts to cope with his anxiety for the unavoidable death.Feelings of happiness does not accumulate simultaneously with abundant socioeconomical and technological progresses.In contrast,many people suffer from feelings of meaninglessness,loneliness,existential vacuum,anxiety and depression.Therefore,factors influencing people’s meaning in life and its related mechanisms must be in focus of research interest to facilitate and promote human’s healthful existence.The present study comprises two sections.The first section explored the features of college students’ experiences of meaning in life by means of questionnaire surveys.It comprises study 1,2.The second section examined by means of questionnaire surveys and serial experiments,the links between college students’ self-concept,relationships or interpersonal interactions as well as meaning in life.It was asked how core influential factors,self-concept and relationships inspire meaning in life.It comprises study 3,4a,4b and 5.Altogether,the present thesis comprises one prestudy and six specific studies which are introduced as follows.Study 1 explored the status and features of college students’ meaning in life.The results indicated that(1)in general,most of the students(> 90%)had not experienced crisis over meaning in life.However,a small part of the students(about 7.8-8.7%)remained in a state of crisis over the meaning in life.In another piece of the work,about half of them(47.0-54.5%)experienced more presence than search for meaning in life,and 69.3% experienced more search for meaning in life.Moreover,the students’ scores for search for meaning in life exceeded significantly those experiences of presence of meaning in life;(2)In developmental matters of meaning in life during one year,experience of presence of meaning in life was on the rise,but the status of search for meaning in life as well as crisis over meaning in life remained stable compared to that of presence of meaning in life.Meanwhile,self-concept and relationship,the core influencing factors were proved;(3)Moreover,there was a significant but negative shared predictive correlation between presence of meaning in life and crisis over meaning in life;(4)Self-concept and relationship were respectively in the first and second ordered by their contribution to meaning in life.Study 2 constructed a model of life’s meaning formation based on the causal connections among relationship,self-concept and meaning in life through crosslagged regression analyses of longitudinal data.Results showed that relationship was an antecedent to and self-concept was its response in the connections between relationship and self-concept;self-concept was an antecedent and meaning in life was its outcome in their relationship;and relationship was an antecedent and meaning in life was its outcome in their relationships;self-concept served as a mediator in the relationship of relationship and meaning in life.In other words,relationship affected meaning in life via self-concept in college students.Pre-study expected to gain a pool of double-word vocabulary which represent high and low meaning in life,respectively,to provide the experimental materials for the follow-up studies.Results showed that there were significant differences in valence and arousal,but not in familiarity between 110 words representing high meaning in life and 88 words representing low meaning in life.The findings suggested that these words can be used as experimental materials to differentiate high and low levels of meaning in life in college students.Study 3 tested the effect of self-concept relative to meaning in life.The findings of self-reports indicated that meaning in life in the group with high self-concept was significantly higher than that in the group with low self-concept after controlling of the pre-test effects of meaning in life as well as positive and negative effects.Moreover,the findings of words retention showed that participants in the high selfconcept group were good at words representing high meaning in life rather than words representing low meaning in life,and participants in the low self-concept group were good at words representing low meaning in life rather than words representing high meaning in life.These findings suggested that there was a significant difference in meaning in life between the two groups.In sum,the findings revealed that selfconcept affected meaning in life in college students.Study 4a examined by experimentation the effect of interpersonal interaction in forms of positive vs.negative responses to meaning in life.Results indicated that the scores of meaning in life in the positive-response group,neutral response group,and negative response group declined successively.But the scores in the first group were significantly higher than those of the third one.These findings suggested that the interaction of positive and negative responses influence students’ meaning in life.Study 4b further explored whether the interaction of being-chosen versus notbeing-chosen representing implicit and weak interpersonal acceptance and rejection,influenced college students’ meaning in life based on the findings from Study 5.The self-reports indicated that meaning in life in the being-chosen group was significant higher than that of the not-being-chosen group after controlling of the effects of pretest meaning in life and positive and negative effects.Thus,the results proved that the interaction of being-chosen and not-being-chosen influenced meaning in life.However,the findings of words retention showed that participants in the not-beingchosen group were good at words representing low meaning in life rather than words representing high meaning in life.Therefore,the findings just partly and directly verified the effects from the interaction of being-chosen and not-being-chosen to meaning in life.Study 5 further explored how relationship and self-concept influenced meaning in life according to the findings of the six studies.Results indicated that identification worked as a moderator and self-concept as a mediator in the relations of interpersonal interaction and meaning in life.First identification and interpersonal interaction changed self-concept,and second affected meaning in life in college students.To sum up,the present thesis demonstrated in college students the status of the concept meaning in life(crisis of meaning,presence of meaning and search for meaning),and revealed that presence of meaning was on the rise,but crisis of meaning and search for meaning were stable compared to presence of meaning for one year.Moreover,presence of meaning and crisis of meaning predicted each other,but search for meaning and crisis of meaning did not do so.Meanwhile,the findings showed that relationship and concept are core factors when it comes to impact meaning in life.The findings of the serial experimentation indicated that personal identification and interpersonal interaction,as two aspects of relationship,influenced fully meaning in life via the self-concept.Overall,the present study first systematically explored the core factors and the mechanism of life’s meaning formation based on knowledge about the status and characteristics of the concept meaning in life in college students.These findings contributed to the knowledge of internal and external factors interactively affecting the meaning in life and proved the facto that self-evaluation becoming negative is the cause of decreasing sense of meaning.The findings also revealed the approaches of maintaining or promoting meaning in life,that is,to actively participate in social interactions with a selfaffirming heart.The findings are helpful to provide reliable empirical evidence and practical directive guidance for life education of college students. |
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