| dc.description.abstract | It is often assumed that most people want their life to be
“meaningful”. But what exactly does this mean? Though
numerous research have documented which factors lead peo ple to experience their life as meaningful and people’s theories
about the best ways to secure a meaningful life, investigations
in people’s concept of meaningful life are scarce. In this paper,
we investigate the folk concept of a meaningful life by study ing people’s third-person attribution of meaningfulness. We
draw on hypotheses from the philosophical literature, and
notably on the work of Susan Wolf (Study 1) and an objection
Antti Kauppinen raised against it (Study 2). In Study 1, we find
that individuals who are successful, competent, and engaged
in valuable and important goals are considered to have more
meaningful lives. In Study 2, we find that the perceived mean ingfulness of a life does not depend only on its components,
but also on how its elements are ordered and how it forms
a coherent whole (the “narrative shape” of this life).
Additionally, our results stress the importance of morality in
participants’ assessments of meaningfulness. Overall, our
results highlight the fruitfulness of drawing on the philosophi cal literature to investigate the folk concept of meaningful life. | vi |
