The function of meaning

与那些在许多重要方面认为自己的生活没有意义的人相比，那些认为自己的生活非常有意义的人过得更好，包括更高的生活质量，更慢的年龄相关认知下降，以及更低的死亡风险。然而，事实证明，当人们评价自己生活的意义时，很难准确地理解他们的意思。此外，还没有研究直接解决为什么生活中的意义体验是潜在的适应性：这种体验起到了什么适应性功能？拟议中的研究解决了这些重要问题，重点关注生活中一个潜在的意想不到的意义来源：环境中模式和规律性的存在。在这个意义上，意义的感觉可以与一个重要的适应性问题联系在一起--识别环境中的可靠模式--这是所有物种的中心目标。这一观点突出了联想学习和基本感知过程与生活意义体验的相关性。一系列11项研究将检验这一预测，即生活意义评级跟踪环境刺激的一致性。这些研究包括让参与者暴露在以模式(或随机性)为特征的刺激下，并测量生活意义。在一些研究中，刺激是显性的，而在另一些研究中则是隐含的，这允许测试这些效果是否需要意识。最后一项研究考察了操作型条件反射范式中辨别性刺激的系统性变化对后续生活意义的影响。这些研究表明，生命有意义的感觉为人提供了重要的信息：它告诉我们世界何时变得有意义。这项研究计划承诺揭开人类对生活意义的体验的神秘面纱，并为这种体验的潜在适应功能提供实验证据。这些拟议的研究为未来的研究提供了基础，将生活意义与认知科学、神经科学和知觉相结合，生活意义是心理健康的基石。此外，这项研究为应用环境的潜在创新方法奠定了基础；例如，例行公事和习惯可能被视为生活意义的来源，对于缺乏内省能力的人群来说，这是一种重要的可能性，而内省能力通常被认为对生活意义很重要。这项研究旨在提供一个更广泛的视角，了解生活中的意义，嵌入自然世界，并了解人类面临的适应问题。

People who judge their lives to be highly meaningful are better off compared to those who rate their lives to be less meaningful in a host of important ways, including higher quality of life, slower age-related cognitive decline, and decreased risk of mortality. However, understanding exactly what people mean when they rate the meaningfulness of their lives has proven difficult. Moreover, no research has directly addressed why the experience of meaning in life is potentially adaptive: What adaptive function does this experience serve? The proposed studies address these important issues, focusing on a potentially unexpected source of meaning in life: The existence of pattern and regularity in the environment. In this sense, the feeling of meaning can be attached to an important adaptive problem - identifying reliable pattern in the environment - which is a central goal for all species. This perspective highlights the relevance of associative learning and basic processes of perception to the experience of meaning in life. A series of 11 studies will test the prediction that meaning in life ratings track the coherence of environmental stimuli. The studies involve exposing participants to stimuli that are characterized by pattern (or randomness) and measuring meaning in life. In some studies, the stimuli are presented explicitly and in others implicitly, allowing a test of whether awareness is required for these effects. A final study examines the effects of systematic variation in a discriminative stimulus in an operant conditioning paradigm on subsequent meaning in life. These studies would suggest that the feeling that life is meaningful provides important information for person: It tells us when the world is making sense.This program of research promises to demystify the human experience of meaning in life and provide experimental evidence for the potential adaptive function of this experience. The proposed studies provide a foundation for future research integrating meaning in life, a cornerstone of psychological well-being, with cognitive science, neuroscience, and perception. Further, this research lays the groundwork for potentially innovative approaches for applied settings; for example, routine and habit may be viewed as sources meaning in life, which is an important possibility for populations that lack the introspective capacities more commonly viewed as important to meaning in life. This research aims to inform a broader perspective on meaning in life, embedded in the natural world and informed by the adaptive problems faced by human beings.