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Objective: Posttrauma adjustment theories postulate that intense stressors violate people s beliefs about the world and perceived ability to achieve valued goals. Failure to make meaning from traumatic events exacerbates negative adjustment (e.g., PTSD), whereas success facilitates positive adjustment (e.g., stress–related growth). The current study aimed to test this model of direct and indirect effects among a sample of veterans. Method: Vietnam veterans (N = 130) completed assessment measures in an online survey format. Participants were largely male (91%) and Caucasian (93%) with a mean age of 61 years. Results: Results supported basic model tenets, linking military stress severity to violations of beliefs and goals. In the final model, only goal violations carried indirect effects of severity on PTSD symptoms. Presence of and search for meaning carried a portion of the indirect effects between goal violations and both PTSD and stress–related growth. Conclusion: Findings suggest that traumatic stress may disrupt people s goals and meaning–making may center on these disruptions. C 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Clin. Psychol. 71:105 116, 2015.

Mounting research has demonstrated relationships between meaning in life (MIL) and a wide range of health–relevant outcomes, including health symptoms, healthpromoting behaviors, health–risking behaviors, cognitive decline, and mortality. Despite these provocative results, there have been few efforts to explain why meaning and health should be linked. It is proposed that meaning supports a more positive health orientation among people, which in turn is related to more positive health behaviors and health. This model was tested using structural path analysis in a healthy, but health–risk–prone, sample of 571 undergraduate students, focusing on health criterion variables of health symptoms, attitudes toward condom use, and substance abuse. Two aspects of health orientation, proactive health orientation and health information discounting, were assessed. Direct relationships were observed between MIL and health criterion variables, as well as indirect relationships carried by combinations of both health orientations. In a generally healthy, health–risk–prone sample, MIL was beneficially related to health symptoms, risky condom attitudes, and substance use. Proactive health orientation and health information discounting statistically explained some of these relationships, suggesting new avenues for intervening to promote healthy lifestyle factors and prevent adverse health outcomes.

Purpose and meaning in career development is a rapidly growing, crossdisciplinary area of research and practice in which counseling and vocational psychology aligns with positive psychology to yield promising applications to career counseling. We provide a brief overview of theory related to purpose and meaning in work, then review six specific areas of application: strengths, positive emotions and flow, gratitude, work hope, job crafting, and perceiving and living a calling. The links of these applications to theory and research are emphasized, and recommendations are offered for how counseling and vocational psychologists might leverage these applications in their work with clients engaged in the career development process.

Adolescent bullying is a common problem in schools across America. The consequences of bullying are significant, and can include severe psychological trauma and suicide. A better understanding of the mechanisms that link bullying and suicidal ideation is needed in order to develop effective prevention and intervention initiatives. Meaning in life is a potential mechanism that has not been studied in this context. It was hypothesized that meaning in life could serve as both a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between bullying victimization and suicidal ideation. As a mediator, meaning in life is considered to explain why bullying victimization leads to suicidal ideation. As a moderator, meaning in life is considered to buffer the ill effect of bullying victimization on suicidal ideation. Data collected from an ethnically diverse sample of 2,936 (50 % female), 6th–12th grade students from one urban school district in the Northeastern US were used to examine the hypotheses. The model for girls was consistent with mediation (i.e., meaning in life may explain how victimization leads to suicidal ideation). The model for boys was consistent with moderation (i.e., the ill effect of victimization on suicidal ideation was attenuated as meaning in life increased). Implications for prevention are discussed.

The present longitudinal study investigated the incremental contribution of meaning in life to sustaining health–promoting behaviors, after controlling for well–being and health values among East–European adolescents (N = 456). Time 1 responses on presence of meaning, search for meaning, well–being, and health values were used to predict levels of healthy eating and physical activity 13 months later. All independent variables significantly predicted engagement in healthy eating and physical activity. Presence of meaning and search for meaning were the most robust predictors, and the interaction of them predicted additional variance in healthy eating among boys and physical activity among girls.

Social relationships are seen to be vital to human functioning, both in terms of psychological functioning and physical health. Relationships are a cornerstone of well-being. For instance, having positive relationships has been linked to greater happiness, life satisfaction and physical health outcomes. Meaning in life, or the perception that one's life is significant and has a purpose, is another prominent cornerstone of well-being. As such, social relationships and meaning in life should have reciprocal associations. In this paper, cross-cultural theory and empirical research will be reviewed to explore the role of family, romantic and friendship relationships in supporting meaning in life. Further, we will discuss the implications of the current research and propose new directions for future research.

The present study examined whether college students who have academic majors that are incongruent with their career aims experience diminished career development. Because the value placed on self-expression differs across cultures, we tested hypotheses in both the United States (N¼301) and South Korea (N¼200). Similar proportions of American (20.2%) and South Korean students (25.5%) reported having an incongruent major. In both samples, students with incongruent majors reported significantly lower levels of career decision self-efficacy, meaningful work, and calling, with medium effect sizes. Potential moderators and mediator in the link of major incongruence to calling and meaningful work were also examined. The patterns of relations among major incongruence and career development indicators (i.e., career decision self-efficacy, meaningful work, and calling) did not differ by nationality or the levels of collectivism, indicating no significant moderating effects. Career decision self-efficacy was found to partially mediate the relation of major incongruence to calling and meaningful work in both samples. These results indicate that major incongruence relates to lower sense of calling and meaningful work in part because of decreased career decision self-efficacy. Directions for future research are discussed.

The central aim of the present study was to assess the predictive value of affective disposition and meaningful work on employee engagement. Specifically, it was proposed that meaningful work moderates the relationship between affective disposition and engagement. Questionnaires were completed by 252 white-collar employees, working in a variety of organizations and jobs across Israel, recruited from community-based samples on a voluntary basis. As hypothesized, work engagement, affective disposition, and meaningful work were positively correlated. Additionally, a significant interaction between affective disposition and meaningful work was found. The relationship between affective disposition and work engagement was found to differ by the extent to which individuals perceived their work as meaningful. Specifically, when work was not perceived as meaningful, employees characterized by high scores on affective disposition were more strongly engaged compared to employees who were characterized by low scores on affective disposition. However, when work was perceived as meaningful, there was no difference in level of engagement found between those with high or low scores on affective disposition. The implications of these results are discussed.

This study examined the interaction of the Thanksgiving holiday with gratitude in relation to well-being using a three-week long, daily diary design with a sample of 172 undergraduate students. Multilevel modelling revealed that without controlling for gratitude, people reported higher levels of positive affect on Thanksgiving holiday than during other days of the study. Reports of life satisfaction, meaning in life, and negative affect did not differ during the holiday. When within-person and between-person levels of gratitude were included, negative relationships were revealed between Thanksgiving and life satisfaction and positive affect. The results from this study sustain the argument that holidays impact people’s well-being depending on certain individual psychological characteristics. In the case of Thanksgiving, gratitude was critical for understanding whether the holiday appeared to positively or negatively influence life satisfaction and positive affect. The present study also supported an important role for gratitude in achieving and maintaining well-being.

Although research relying on self-report inventories has built an increased appreciation of the importance of meaning in life, such research has strayed somewhat from the original promise of meaning in life research, which was to shed light on the individual experience of meaning. Some research has focused on understanding people’s sources of meaning. However, previous methods have relied on verbal ways of assessing sources of meaning in life. In recognition of the fact that not Everyone has highly developed verbal skills – and that even those who do can find it hard to articulate what life means – we offer a new method for understanding individuals’ experiences with meaning in life. In this article, we describe the use of photography to elicit information about people’s sources of meaning and provide inductive qualitative analysis of a pilot study using this method. Photography holds great potential as a new method for seeing meaning through another’s eyes.

Many people desire work that is meaningful. However, research in this area has attracted diverse ideas about meaningful work (MW), accompanied by an equally disparate collection of ways of assessing MW. To further advance study in this area, the authors propose a multidimensional model of work as a subjectively meaningful experience consisting of experiencing positive meaning in work, sensing that work is a key avenue for making meaning, and perceiving one’s work to benefit some greater good. The development of a scale to measure these dimensions is described, an initial appraisal of the reliability and construct validity of the instrument’s scores is reported using a sample of university employees (N = 370) representing diverse occupations. MW scores correlated in predicted ways with work-related and general well-being indices, and accounted for unique variance beyond common predictors of job satisfaction, days reported absent from work, and life satisfaction. The authors discuss ways in which this conceptual model provides advantages to scholars, counselors, and organizations interested in fostering MW.

Although most of the attention paid to existential aspects of human life has focused on adults and the elderly, several recent arguments have been made for the centrality of existential issues in adolescents' lives (Burrow & Hill, 2011; Damon, Menon, & Bronk, 2003; Hacker, 1994; Steger, Bundick, & Yeager, 2012). These arguments call attention to the correspondence of existential issues with the most important developmental tasks of these formative years, namely, the shaping of an individual world view in conjunction with the development of an identity (Erikson, 1968). Descriptions of the early stages of identity formation as a process of exploration that precedes commitment (Marcia, 1966) underscore conceptual similarities with the existential process of searching for meaning in life (Steger, 2009). It has been proposed that the identity formation process supports the foundation of meaning in life (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006)

Research on work as a calling is limited by measurement concerns. In response, the authors introduce the multidimensional Calling and Vocation Questionnaire (CVQ) and the Brief Calling scale (BCS), instruments assessing presence of, and search for, a calling. Study 1 describes CVQ development using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a cross-validated splitsample approach with 456 undergraduates. The CVQ contained six reliable subscales that form CVQ-Presence and CVQ-Search scores, which demonstrated moderate 1-month test–retest reliability, good fit to a six-factor structure, and initial support for construct validity. Study 2 reports a multitrait–multimethod analysis with 134 undergraduates and 365 informants. Self-reported CVQ and BCS scores moderately to strongly correlated with informant reports and scores for both instruments correlated in hypothesized directions with work hope, prosocial work motivation, life meaning, and the search for meaning. CVQ and BCS scores provide psychometrically sound measures of calling, with the CVQ offering the potential for more fine-grained, multidimensional analyses