The Sense Of Meaninglessness In The Eyes Of College Students

With the development of society and science and technology,people's life is more convenient and comfortable.But at the same time,people's hearts are also undergoing some changes:a growing number of surveys on the sense of life meaning have found that the proportion of college students who feel meaninglessness or low sense of life meaning is 21.2%--47.4%,which means the psychological phenomenon of meaninglessness is becoming more and more common nowadays.However,previous studies focused on the sense of meaning of life,but little was known about the sense of meaninglessness itself.The understanding about the sense of meaninglessness will help us to have a deep and comprehensive understanding about the phenomenon of the sense of meaninglessness,which can provide a more targeted direction to deal with the problem in the future.Therefore,With the sense of meaninglessness as the research theme,this paper conducted semi-structured interviews for 13 College students with the sense of meaninglessness by means of purpose sampling,and analyzed the transcript of interview recording with the help of grounded theory,aiming to explore the manifestation,the reason and the coping approach for the sense of meaninglessness among college students.Through the answer of respondents about the manifestation,the reasons;the coping approachs for the sense of meaninglessness,we got the in-depth understanding about these,the results showed that:(1)the participants' meaningless is embodied in The sense experience,Trait,Influence,Attitude and so on four categories.there are 6 units in the sense experience,which are feeling meaningless/insignificance,negative emotional experience,low value,chaos experience,alienation experience,stagnant state;The emergence of the sense of meaninglessness will have a negative impact on the subjects'emotion,cognition,interpersonal relationship and life,and even lead to individual suicide.(2)The participants' understanding about the sense of meaninglessness can be divided into two categories,including the understanding about the topic of meaning and the reason of the sense of meaninglessness.The reason of the sense of meaninglessness involving 8 units,which are the own factor,relationships,Reality is not in line with their expectations,conflict of ideas between oneself and the outside world,think or discuss,to do something,the contrast.Among them,there are four units which have a greater influence to the emergence of a sense of meaninglessness,which respectively are the respondents' own low sense of value/contradictory personality characteristics,the alienation state/rupture setback in relationship,failed goals/Expectation gap.(3)In the part of the coping approach to the sense of meaningless,cotains two categories-coping approachs and controllability.There are six coping styles that come to mind by college students:relationship improvement/relationship support,search for meaning by cognition,finding something to do to dilute the sense of meaninglessness,waiting for internal change,seeking professional help,and hoping that unknown external forces will emerge to improve what they can't.However,Most respondents mentioned that these approachs are hard to control by their own.