Residents of poorer nations find greater meaning in life

[cronus]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 121713.php

Residents of poorer nations find greater meaning in life

While residents of wealthy nations tend to have greater life satisfaction, new research shows that those living in poorer nations report having greater meaning in life.

These findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that meaning in life may be higher in poorer nations as a result of greater religiosity. As countries become richer, religion becomes less central to people's lives and they lose a sense of meaning in life.

"Thus far, the wealth of nations has been almost always associated with longevity, health, happiness, or life satisfaction," explains psychological scientist Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia. "Given that meaning in life is an important aspect of overall well-being, we wanted to look more carefully at differential patterns, correlates, and predictors for meaning in life."
Oishi and colleague Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigated life satisfaction, meaning, and well-being by examining data from the 2007 Gallup World Poll, a large-scale survey of over 140,000 participants from 132 countries. In addition to answering a basic life satisfaction question, participants were asked: "Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?" and "Is religion an important part of your daily life?"

The data revealed some unexpected trends:
"Among Americans, those who are high in life satisfaction are also high in meaning in life," says Oishi. "But when we looked at the societal level of analysis, we found a completely different pattern of the association between meaning in life and life satisfaction."
When looking across many countries, Oishi and Diener found that people in wealthier nations were more educated, had fewer children, and expressed more individualistic attitudes compared to those in poorer countries – all factors that were associated with higher life satisfaction but a significantly lower sense of meaning in life.

(continued, thinking for yourself is less meaningful than thinking like the religous herd and knowing stuff like over-population and contraceptives....got it? :facepalm: )

[JimC]

Mostly, their meaning involves some stupid religious delusion, so fuck 'em...

[cronus]

How can this article be classed as science though?

[FBM]

Maybe they just don't make the mistake of pegging happiness to wealth so much.

[rainbow]

Mostly, their meaning involves some stupid religious delusion, so fuck 'em...

We have greater meaning because we eat fried chicken and watermelon.



...and the occasional missionary.

[Svartalf]

Maybe they just don't make the mistake of pegging happiness to wealth so much.

Wealth isn't an end, but as a means, it's damn handy.

[Thinking Aloud]

If the "meaning of life" is that life is a means to achieve endless happiness when you're dead, then of course people are going to find meaning there. They're just finding the wrong meaning on the back of a false promise. Fortunately for them, they'll never actually be disappointed, because they'll be dead.

Only those non-religious people who actually think about it will find a further meaning to their life - the "spark in the dark" opportunity to discover the universe - but I suspect a majority of people find thinking just too hard, and would rather not.

[Audley Strange]

Urbana champaign eh?