Personal goals, life meaning, and virtue: Wellsprings of a positive life.

Emmons, Robert A.

doi:10.1037/10594-005

Cited by 378 publications

(309 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Examples of such goals are: being in a committed relationship, keeping up with sports, being organized, or attaining power or status." This description was based on previous research on personal strivings, defined as consciously accessible and personally meaningful objectives that people pursue in their daily lives (37)(38)(39). We asked participants to list anywhere from 1 to 25 goals (in the order in which they came to mind) within two minutes.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable

Gino

Wilmuth

Brooks

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

130

104

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Women are underrepresented in most high-level positions in organizations. Though a great deal of research has provided evidence that bias and discrimination give rise to and perpetuate this gender disparity, in the current research we explore another explanation: men and women view professional advancement differently, and their views affect their decisions to climb the corporate ladder (or not). In studies 1 and 2, when asked to list their core goals in life, women listed more life goals overall than men, and a smaller proportion of their goals related to achieving power at work. In studies 3 and 4, compared to men, women viewed highlevel positions as less desirable yet equally attainable. In studies 5-7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from college, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige and money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict and tradeoffs). In these studies, women associated high-level positions with conflict, which explained the relationship between gender and the desirability of professional advancement. Finally, in studies 8 and 9, men and women alike rated power as one of the main consequences of professional advancement. Our findings reveal that men and women have different perceptions of what the experience of holding a high-level position will be like, with meaningful implications for the perpetuation of the gender disparity that exists at the top of organizational hierarchies.gender | professional advancement | goals | power | achievement E ven in societies that stress the importance of gender equality, women are underrepresented in most senior-level positions (1). For instance, recent estimates indicate that women comprise less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, less than 15% of executive officers, less than 20% of full professors in the natural sciences, and only 6% of partners in venture capital firms (2-4). Moreover, it seems that the small percentage of women who do attain executive positions are relegated to spheres within the organization that have less influence and fewer opportunities for professional advancement (5). These differences may not exist at the start of the employment relationship. In fact, recent evidence has found that female applicants were favored over male ones for positions as assistant professors in science (6).Many reasons exist for the gender imbalance in high-level positions. These reasons can be grouped into two broad categories. The first category is what sociologists refer to as demandside factors and psychologists call interpersonal effects. These factors encompass the institutional barriers that women face because of the divergent ways in which men and women are perceived and treated by others. For example, evidence suggests that compared to men, women are perceived as less competent and lacking leadership potential (7-9) and are more likely to encounter challenges, skepticism, and backla...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We asked participants to list anywhere from 1 to 25 goals (in the order in which they came to mind) within two minutes. Participants then categorized their goals by choosing among different goal categories with descriptions (Supporting Information), which were based on research on personal strivings (37)(38)(39).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable

Gino

Wilmuth

Brooks

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

130

104

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“…One might argue that this relates to more frequent flow-experiences when engaging in activities that are congruent with perseverance as strength-especially those activities that are internally motivated (Peterson & Seligman, 2004;Wellenzohn, Proyer, Gander, & Ruch, 2012). Finally, an alternative explanation of the finding might be that perseverant people more often achieve their goals, especially long-term goals (see Emmons, 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self- and peer-rated character strengths: How do they relate to satisfaction with life and orientations to happiness?

Buschor¹,

Proyer²,

Ruch³

2013

The Journal of Positive Psychology

111

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This paper addresses the question as to whether previously reported findings on a positive relation between character strengths, satisfaction with life, and orientations to happiness (OTH) can be replicated for peer ratings of character strengths. A sample of 334 Swiss adults completed questionnaires and collected informant ratings by 634 peers. Selfand peer ratings converged well and suggest that, primarily: the strengths of hope, zest, and curiosity -but also gratitude and love -play key roles in the interplay of strengths and satisfaction with life. Peer ratings of strengths also related positively with the endorsement of a pleasurable, engaged, and meaningful life. Further analyses show that the OTH predict satisfaction with life beyond self-and peer-rated character strengths. There, the engaged life (i.e. endorsement of flow) was most relevant. This study supports earlier findings that argue for an important role of character strengths when describing the well-being of a person. AbstractThis paper addresses the question as to whether previously reported findings on a positive relation between character strengths, satisfaction with life and orientations to happiness can be replicated for peer-ratings of character strengths. A sample of 334 Swiss adults completed questionnaires and collected informant ratings by 634 peers. Self-and peer ratings converged well and suggest that, primarily: the strengths of hope, zest, and curiosity-but also gratitude and love-play key roles in the interplay of strengths and satisfaction with life. Peer-ratings of strengths also related positively with the endorsement of a pleasurable, engaged, and meaningful life. Further analyses show that the orientations to happiness predict satisfaction with life beyond self-and peer rated character strengths. There, the engaged life (i.e., endorsement of flow) was most relevant. This study supports earlier findings that argue for an important role of character strengths when describing the well-being of a person.Keywords: character strengths, life satisfaction, self and peer-ratings, VIA, well-being 4 Self-and peer-rated character strengths: How do they relate to satisfaction with life and orientations to happiness?The question of how individuals can achieve enduring happiness has been an important topic of discussion from the time of ancient philosophers to today's empirical researchers of various disciplines. Various aspects of well-being such as life satisfaction have been studied in relation to demographics, health issues, social contact, activity, personality and many other variables. Recently, the idea that traits valued as morally positive (strengths of character) are robustly related to satisfaction with life has gained considerable attention in the literature and encourages further research along these lines.Character strengths and life satisfaction. Virtues and character have become important topics of research in positive psychology (Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005). One influential contribution to this area is...

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“…Those domains include, for example, a sense that one has goals or purpose, values that distinguish right from wrong, efficacy and the capacity to enact those deeply held values, and a sense of self-worth driven by meaningful social interactions and mutual respect (7,8). When people feel their lives lack meaning in one of these domains they either respond adaptively, by adopting behaviors that increase the likelihood of finding meaning, or maladaptively, by choosing to act in ways that further rob their lives of meaning or diminish their chances of finding meaning (9,10).…”

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confidence: 99%

People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age

Alter

Hershfield

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Although humans measure time using a continuous scale, certain numerical ages inspire greater self-reflection than others. Six studies show that adults undertake a search for existential meaning when they approach a new decade in age (e.g., at ages 29, 39, 49, etc.) or imagine entering a new epoch, which leads them to behave in ways that suggest an ongoing or failed search for meaning (e.g., by exercising more vigorously, seeking extramarital affairs, or choosing to end their lives).aging | meaning in life | time | decade | life-span development A lthough humans age continuously, many societies divide the human life span into 10-year periods, or decades. In the English-speaking world, for example, people describe these periods as "the twenties," "the thirties," "the forties," and so on, which implies that human aging progresses through discrete 10-year epochs. Because the imminent approach of a new decade signals the end of one era and the beginning of another, we examine how adults respond when they enter the final year of a chronological decade (i.e., when they reach the age of 29, 39, or 49 years, and so on, hereafter, "9-ending ages" and the people at those ages, "9-enders").We expect decades to play an outsized role in human psychology, just as discrete boundaries do in other domains. For example, round numbers occur more often than other numbers in literature (1) and function as behavioral goals (e.g., SAT takers are more likely to retake the SAT if they score just under rather than just over a round number) (2). We confirmed this intuition by asking 100 adults on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform to indicate, in descending order, which 10 birthdays they considered to be the most significant throughout the human lifespan. Apart from 18 and 21, which are momentous because they signal the beginning of adulthood and the arrival of certain state-sanctioned rights and responsibilities, the most common responses were 30, 40, 60, 50, and 100. Moreover, the most common end-digit for all listed ages was 0 (46.4% of all responses), followed distantly by ages ending in 1 (14.8%), 5 (12.7%), 8 (9.6%), 6 (7.1%), 3 (5.2%), 2 (1.5%), 9 (1.1%), 7 (0.7%), and 4 (0.7%). In contrast to ages 18 and 21, 0-ending ages are momentous because they feel subjectively different from the ages that come before them, rather than because they impose objective changes on people's lives. Because the approach of a new decade represents a salient boundary between life stages and functions as a marker of progress through the life span, and because life transitions tend to prompt changes in evaluations of the self, people are more apt to evaluate their lives as a chronological decade ends than they are at other times (3-5). Consequently, although people may not routinely ponder whether their lives are meaningful, we believe they will be more likely to consider this question when they reach 9-ending ages.Once they do audit the meaningfulness of their lives, people tend to reach one of two conclusions: Either they conclude happily that their l...

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Personal goals, life meaning, and virtue: Wellsprings of a positive life.

Cited by 378 publications

References 75 publications

Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable

Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable

Self- and peer-rated character strengths: How do they relate to satisfaction with life and orientations to happiness?

People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age

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