Feeling Important, Feeling Well. The Association Between Mattering and Well-being: A Meta-analysis Study

Abstract

Perception of mattering, the feeling of being important to others (Rosenberg & McCullogh in Community Ment Health J 2:163–182, 1981), is receiving increasing attention as a factor that promotes well-being. Individual well-being has been defined in different ways, such as hedonic, as in a deep satisfaction with life (Diener & Lucas in Well-being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology 213, 1999), eudaimonic, as in the realization of the true self (Ryff in Curr Dir Psychol Sci 4(4):99–104, 1995), and holistic, which is satisfaction across all domains of life (Prilleltensky et al., in J Community Psychol 43(2):199–226, 2015). The present study aims to systematize this body of literature on mattering and well-being to clarify whether the two constructs are linked independently from their conceptualization; to this end, a meta-analysis of 30 studies, following the PRISMA framework, was conducted. A significant medium effect size emerged between mattering and well-being (r = 0.41*** [95% CI 0.33, 0.49]), with eudaimonic well-being showing a higher effect size in association with mattering (r = 0.55*** [95% CI 0.46, 0.64]). The results indicate that mattering is a relevant construct when studying the positive functioning of individuals; in particular, mattering was found to be a key factor in the process of defining one’s sense of worth and purpose in life.

What‘s the Matter? Assessing Levels of Psychological Mattering and Extracurricular Involvement in Students at Dalhousie University

“…Scarpa et al, (2021) found that general mattering was predictive of higher overall, interpersonal, community, occupational, physical well-being, psychological, and economic well-being. This means that mattering impacts many different domains of an individual's life and health, consistent with the positive relationship between mattering and holistic well-being (Paradisi et al, 2024). A study by Giangrasso et al, (2021) found university students with higher levels of general mattering were more likely to be satisfied with their life, than those with lower feelings of mattering.…”