SCIENCE@home

Meaning and Attention Intertwined: Experimental and Experience-Sampling Findings.

K. Y. Y. Tam,Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg,Christian S. Chan,Michael Inzlicht

Published 2025 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

ABSTRACT

How does one attain meaning? Though pivotal to well-being, this question has been explored mainly within symbolic and philosophical domains, with little focus on its cognitive processes. We present a theoretical integration of meaning and attention, followed by five studies investigating their relationship in lab experiments and everyday life (total N = 1,654). Experimental findings indicate that meaning increased attention (Studies 1 and 3), and attention increased meaning, but only when meaning could be found in a stimulus (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3). An experience-sampling study further reveals a positive meaning-attention association at dispositional, situational, and cross-levels (Study 4). Across varied daily activities, participants reported greater meaning when they paid more attention. These studies also explored the interplay of meaning and attention with boredom, negative emotions, and subjective well-being. Together, our results suggest that paying attention during everyday activities can, in some instances, enhance the experience of meaning.

PUBLICATION RECORD

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-60 of 60 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

  • No citing papers are available for this paper.

Showing 0-0 of 0 citing papers · Page 1 of 1