The Relationship Between Power And The Meaning Of Life

The meaning of life is one of the most basic and most powerful motivation, its research is mainly related to the subjective well-being, self-esteem, self-efficacy and life satisfaction. Power is considered to be the most basic power in social relations, and it is ubiquitous among colleagues, friends, family members, and lovers. Individuals with high power possesses more resources(such as wealth, knowledge and other valuable resources),depended less on others and is provided with the stronger self-esteem,stronger sense of subjective well-being, higher self-efficacy in previous studies. Researches were currently lack in the power and the meaning of life. people pay more attention to the purpose and meaning in life with the raise of positive psychology, therefore, understanding the relationship between power and the meaning of life is very important significant.Purpose: There are two main purpose of this study. First of all is to discuss power exists whether and the meaning of life between correlation and related degree. Second is through the experimental method to test the power of priming paradigm is feasible in the local. The study in the first experiment studies to explore the relationship between power, self-esteem and a sense of meaning in life. In Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 through manipulation of the power of different priming paradigm to check the power’s effection of priming.Methodology: Experiment 1 provide 140 questionnaires to Zhengzhou University Students, recycle 137 effective questionnaire,and preliminary analysis three variables through the use of power questionnaire, self esteem scale(SES) and the feeling of meaning of life questionnaire; Experiment 2 operate the power by Chen, Lee-Chai and Bargh(2001) word search task. Experiment 3 through autobiographical memories prime power, namely to guide high power group of individuals "Recall a life you have the power to the scene. Power means that you control the other person(s) of a certain(some) things, or you have a right to him. Please describe in detail as much as possible what is happening and what is your feeling?". Inform the low power group to try to recall a life in which others have the power and you don’t have the power of the scene(Galinsky, 2003).Results: In Experiment 1, the correlation coefficient of power and self- esteem is 0.55, the correlation coefficient of power and life significance is 0.36, and the correlation coefficient between self-esteem and life significance was 0.45. Sense of power through self- esteem to the meaning of life 95% confidence interval for the mediating effect of [0.09,0.30], indicating a significant mediating effect; In Experiment 2, Priming manipulation of power through word searches, the data are independent samples t test power for the high group and low power group of meaning of life find that sense the difference is not significant(P > 0.05,t=-0.23); In Experiment 3, through the memories priming power, power sense after self-esteem to the sense of the meaning of life the mediating effect of 95% confidence interval for the [0.0904, 0.3023], indicating a significant mediating effect.Conclusion: The above research results show that individuals with high power are relatively low power individuals, higher self-esteem, life meaning feeling more high, and self-esteem in power and the meaning of life between exist fully mediating role. About the power of manipulation paradigm study finds, autobiographical memories prime power to achieve the desired effect, namely high power group than low power group of life meaning feeling stronger. The lexical priming does not cause significant differences in the sense of meaning of life.