Meaning in life, a global belief that one’s life has meaning and is significant, has long been considered an important index of well-being and has recently emerged as a pivotal predictor of other well-being indices. Meaning in life has exhibited strong positive correlations with life satisfaction and joy and has been inversely associated with depression and sadness. Meaning also has been found to mediate the relationship between both physical and social functioning and distress among cancer survivors and the relationship between religiousness and life satisfaction. Furthermore, change in meaning has predicted positive change in mental health over time, and patients who have higher preadmission meaning have exhibited less depression, pain, and physical disability at discharge and 1-year follow-up, compared to patients with lower initial meaning. As higher meaning predicts a variety of positive outcomes, lower meaning may undermine both psychological and physical health. For example, meaninglessness (along with perceived loss of control) has been found to mediate the relationship between uncontrollable stress and substance use. In a similar vein, loss of meaning has accounted for the negative health consequences that arise from life stresses in highly valued roles. The recent literature thus testifies to the central role of global meaning in well-being and psychological dysfunction. Although the importance of global meaning is now unequivocal, the factors that produce or lead to global meaning are not well understood, and empirical studies that examine the development of global meaning are rare. Indeed, despite the centrality of stress in theories of meaning development and posttraumatic growth, major stressors often have been found to predict loss of meaning, and a vast literature demonstrates that stressors can result in psychological and physiological damage . Thus, ascertaining the malleable factors that prevent loss of meaning in the face of stress is vital.

Positive Automatic Thoughts

One factor that may help to prevent stress-induced erosion of meaning is positive automatic thoughts (PATs). In cognitive theories, the PATs and negative automatic thoughts that arise when deep beliefs (also termed schemata) are activated by stressful events affect stress-related coping and adaptation. In contrast to thoughts, beliefs generally take an if–then form (e.g., ‘‘If everybody likes me, it means I’m a good person’’) and tend to remain at preconscious or unconscious levels, although they can be accessed with psychotherapy and practice. Automatic thoughts consist of declarative selfstatements (e.g., ‘‘I’m fun to be with’’ and ‘‘I’m proud of my accomplishments’’ from the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-Positive or ATQP; Ingram & Wisnicki, 1988) that ‘‘occur without effort or intention’’ and are more accessible to introspection. Theorists have argued that PATs (and negative automatic thoughts) ‘‘result in emotional, cognitive, biological, behavioral, and interpersonal response patterns’’ to major stressors, thus shaping stress-related adaptation. Consistent with prominent cognitive theories, positive beliefs about self, world, and the future (as well as one’s relationships with others) have been hypothesized to foster healthy adjustment and positive self-regard via activation of PATs that buffer the effects of stress and thereby confer resilience. Studying PATs may therefore be pivotal in answering the key question of whether cognitive and motivational processes linked to happiness can be acquired or taught. Empirical evidence has supported the importance of PATs and the hypotheses of Ingram and Wisnicki (1988), Lightsey (1996), and McCann et al. (1988). Preexisting frequency of PATs has predicted success of cognitive therapy for depressive tendencies, and client response to cognitive therapy has been more strongly predicted by changes in positive thinking than by changes in negative thinking. PATs also have been found to predict future happiness and to correlate inversely with depression. Additionally, functional persons have displayed more positive thoughts relative to negative thoughts. Furthermore, consistent with Ingram and Wisnicki’s (1988) thesis that PATs may act as stress buffers, PATs have in most cross-sectional studies moderated the relationship between stress and dysphoria such that, at higher levels of PATs, the positive relationship between stress and dysphoria was weaker. This moderation effect was clinically significant in that persons with infrequent PATs evidenced mild to moderate depressive symptoms in the face of high stress, whereas persons with frequent PATs did not display depressive symptoms under high stress conditions. The stress-buffering effect of trait PATs may be quite broad and may aid not only in avoidance of depression but in reduced stress-related loss of meaning. In this conceptualization, high frequencies of PATs would serve as a core psychological resource that protects some persons from stress-related challenges to their meaning system or, alternatively, confers resilience by enabling such challenges to be framed as opportunities for meaning and growth. Conversely, low levels of PATs may foster vulnerability of the meaning system to stressors, resulting in lowered meaning in the face of stress. The thesis that PATs affect the strength of the stress–meaning relationship differs from some recent theories in emphasizing cognitive over affective determinants of resilience or meaning. For example, in broaden-and-build theory, trait-resilient individuals are hypothesized to experience positive affect that broadens thought–action repertoires, produces flexible and positive mental states , and fosters successful adjustment to adversity.

The purpose of this study was to test whether positive automatic cognitions moderated the relationship between event stressfulness and meaning in life. Measures of these constructs were administered to 232 students and community‐dwelling adults. Supporting hypotheses and the literature, positive automatic cognitions moderated the relationship between event stressfulness and meaning in life. For persons with high levels of positive thinking, greater event stressfulness was associated with higher meaning in life. For persons with low levels of positive thinking, greater event stressfulness was associated with lower meaning in life.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to help to clarify why the stressfulness of challenging events leads to loss of meaning for some but no loss of meaning for others. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that, for lower levels of PATs, event stressfulness would be associated with lower meaning in life, whereas at higher levels of PATs, event stressfulness would not be associated with lower meaning in life. This hypothesis was partly supported: Among persons with less frequent PATs, event stressfulness had a significant inverse relationship with meaning in life. However, among persons with more frequent PATs, event stressfulness had a significant and positive relationship with meaning in life. Indeed, consistent with findings that psychological strengths such as optimism and perceived self-efficacy are positively associated with stress-related growth and may facilitate adjustment and with findings that cognitive coping strategies predict unique variance in posttraumatic growth, our findings suggest that high levels of PATs may allow persons to utilize highly stressful events as opportunities for enhanced meaning and growth. Future research may address broader conditions that facilitate initiation and maintenance of PATs and other forms of positive thinking. For example, in one study, 92% of participants reported that it was easier to generate positive thoughts in an upright position as opposed to a slumped position. This is consistent with other evidence that postures and gestures affect emotions and decision making and suggests that counselors should be attentive to somatic and bodily factors as well as environmental and psychological factors. Finally, assessment of the means via which PATs may prevent the loss of meaning and augment the presence of meaning in the face of stress should be examined. tudies that test whether PATs enhance meaning via augmentation of self-efficacy beliefs are warranted.

Reference

Boyraz, G., & Lightsey, O. R., Jr. (2012). Can positive thinking help? Positive automatic thoughts as moderators of the stress–meaning relationship. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 82(2), 267–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.2012.01150.x