Routines and Meaning in Life: Does Activity Content or Context Matter?

Abstract

People feel that their lives are more meaningful while engaging in behaviors more closely aligned with their routines. Does the behavioral content of these routines and the contextual factors surrounding their enactment matter for this relationship? In two experience sampling studies ( N = 93, 1,512 episodes; N = 97, 1,629 episodes), we test whether the relationship between routines and meaning in life (MIL) depends on the content of the activities. We found that the degree to which one’s current activity is a routine positively related to momentary MIL beyond other meaningful features (e.g., relationships, goals, prosociality) of that activity. We conducted Study 2 in the context of mass routine disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found even stronger relationships between routine enactment and concurrent MIL in this context which held controlling for factors, including perceived chaos, mood, and anxiety. These findings suggest that routines uniquely relate to MIL, beyond the meaningfulness of their content and across contexts.

Leveraging the Experience Sampling Method to Study Meaning in Everyday Life

“…Similarly, data from ESM surveys sent to participants six times per day for seven days showed that the degree to which participants' current activity was part of a routine positively related to concurrent feelings of meaning in life . These findings were replicated in two additional studies (Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022), which used a similar design, with participants completing three ESM surveys per day for seven days. In these studies, the degree to which a current behavior was a part of a routine positively predicted meaning in life regardless of whether the behavior was linked to other meaningful features of the activity like the degree to which it fostered relationships, goals, or prosociality (Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022).…”

“…These findings were replicated in two additional studies (Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022), which used a similar design, with participants completing three ESM surveys per day for seven days. In these studies, the degree to which a current behavior was a part of a routine positively predicted meaning in life regardless of whether the behavior was linked to other meaningful features of the activity like the degree to which it fostered relationships, goals, or prosociality (Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022). In other words, engagement in even mundane routines predicted feelings of meaning in life.…”

“…Many aspects of good lives, including social relationships and happiness, are widely understood as sources of meaning in life (Lambert et al, 2010;Heintzelman et al, 2020). However, other correlates, such as mundane routines Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022), income (Ward & King, 2016), right-wing authoritarianism (Womick et al, 2019), religious fundamentalism (Womick et al, 2021), and hate (Elnakouri et al, 2022), are more surprising sources of meaning in life which participants may not include in retrospective or general reports of meaning despite their relationships with meaning in life on average or within person. The reliance of meaning in life research on global and retrospective reports adds a layer of cognitive processing to meaning in life judgments that may sway these reports of meaning away from actual experiences of meaning as these events are filtered through construct beliefs.…”

“…Finally, direct evidence from a limited set of existing ESM studies including meaning in life measures supports the presence of momentary within-person variation in meaning in life. Within-person variability estimates for meaning in life measures in ESM studies have ranged from 18% to 27% and 32% (Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022) emphasizing that experiences of meaning in life are not fully captured as a trait-level construct. An additional ESM study found that meaning in life fluctuates over the course of a day, depending on time of day, day of week, and daily activities and estimated that the division of meaning in life variance was 71.6% at the moment level, 20.8% at the person level, and 7.5% at the day level (Choi et al, 2017).…”

“…Beyond using ESM data to examine the stability and volatility of meaning in life reports within person, this type of data can also be used to advance our understanding of the sources of meaning in life as they arise in everyday life. Existing ESM work has identified sources of meaning that are not captured in lay assumptions about this experience, namely engaging in mundane routine activities (Mohideen & Heintzelman, 2022), demonstrating the utility of this approach for expanding our understanding of lived experiences of meaning in life beyond existing assumptions about the valued aspects of meaningful lives. Future ESM research can assess a wide range of situational features of participants' natural environments and experiences to draw more inclusive understanding of the antecedents of feelings of meaningfulness.…”