The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations

Heine, Steven; Proulx, Travis; Vohs, Kathleen D.

doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1

Cited by 1,061 publications

(1,257 citation statements)

References 132 publications

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“…Trafimow & Trafimow, 1999). Consistent with this view, Heine, Proulx, and Vohs (2006) recently argued that acting in line with moral norms is a way to satisfy one's need for consistency and structure. Thus, people with strong needs for consistency and structure should be highly motivated to fulfill moral duties, such as helpfulness, to satisfy their needs for consistency and structure (for a review see Cross, Gore, & Morris, 2003).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 96%

Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being

Gebauer

Riketta

Broemer

et al. 2008

Journal of Research in Personality

119

100

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We propose two fundamentally different motives for helping: gaining pleasure and fulfilling one's duty (''pressure''). Using the newly developed Pleasure and Pressure based Prosocial Motivation Scale, we demonstrated the distinctiveness of pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation in three studies. Although the two motives exhibited different relations to a variety of personality characteristics, they were similarly related to trans-situational helping. Of particular interest, pleasure based prosocial motivation was positively related to self-actualization, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and positive affect and negatively related to negative affect. On the contrary, pressure based prosocial motivation was unrelated to self-actualization, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and positive affect but positively related to negative affect. These results qualify research showing that prosocial life goals generally increase subjective well-being.

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Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 96%

Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being

Gebauer

Riketta

Broemer

et al. 2008

Journal of Research in Personality

119

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There are two major models that connect the sense of meaning in life with meaning frameworks: the meaning maintenance model (Heine et al, 2006) and the meaning making model (Park & Folkman, 1997 The meaning maintenance model (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006) describes the compensatory strategies that are used to restore a sense of familiarity and consistency in the event of a "meaning violation," when events violate expectations. Proulx & Inzlicht (2012) describe three mechanisms by which meaning violations may be addressed: (1) resolving or masking the meaning violation itself; (2) fluid compensation, or looking for meaning elsewhere; The meaning making model (Park & Folkman, 1997) focuses on the challenge that traumatic events can pose to a person's meaning framework and the ways in which they subsequently reappraise either the meaning of the situation or their sense of global meaning.…”

Section: Meaning In Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion.

Taves¹,

Asprem²,

Ihm³

2018

Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

137

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Abstract:To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from "religions" to "worldviews" and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on "big questions" ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans' evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and worldmaking and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews.

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“…Similarly, the Meaning Maintenance Model (MMM) holds that people are motivated to organize their internal and external experiences into frameworks that provide meaning to their lives, but the assumption is that any belief system to which the individual is strongly committed is capable of serving this purpose (Heine et al, 2006;. The idea is that unpredictability is inherently unsettling and that individuals therefore seek to impose meaning and structure on their experiences (see also Whitson & Galinsky, 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Not All Ideologies are Created Equal: Epistemic, Existential, and Relational Needs Predict System-Justifying Attitudes

Hennes¹,

Nam²,

Stern³

et al. 2012

Social Cognition

176

229

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Whereas most social psychological perspectives assume that needs to manage uncertainty, existential anxiety, and social cohesion should motivate any form of ideological zeal, System Justification Theory predicts that these needs are positively associated with the endorsement of system-justifying beliefs, opinions, and values but negatively associated with the endorsement of system-challenging ideological outcomes. For the first time we test a full theoretical model in which system justification mediates the effects of individual differences in epistemic, existential, and relational needs on attitudes toward public policy issues and social movements. Specifically, we conducted a national survey of 182 americans and found that, as hypothesized, lower need for cognition, greater death anxiety, and a stronger desire to share reality each contributed significantly and independently to economic system justification, which, in turn, contributed to support for the Tea Party (a movement aimed at restoring america's "traditional values") and opposition to Occupy Wall Street (a movement seeking to reduce social and economic inequality and minimize corporate influence on government). economic system justification also mediated the effects of these needs on the endorsement of status quo positions with respect to health care, immigration, global climate change, and the "Ground Zero mosque." These findings suggest that epistemic, existential, and relational needs lead disproportionately to support for system-justifying, rather than system-challenging, policies and movements.[A]s a prominent ultra-conservative radio commentator observed recently: "There is nothing wrong with our American system. It is as good as it ever was, but we must

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The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations

Abstract: The meaning maintenance model (MMM)

Cited by 1,061 publications

References 132 publications

Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being

Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being

Psychology, meaning making, and the study of worldviews: Beyond religion and non-religion.

Not All Ideologies are Created Equal: Epistemic, Existential, and Relational Needs Predict System-Justifying Attitudes

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