Scientific American:

What does it take to live a meaningful life? In trying to answer this question, most researchers focus on the valence of the life experience: is it positive or negative?

Researchers who focus on positive emotions have amassed evidence suggesting that we are more likely to find more meaning in our lives on days when we experience positive emotions. In contrast, researchers taking a meaning-making perspective tend to focus on meaning in the context of adjustment to stressful events. These two areas of research are often treated separately from each other, making it difficult to answer the question about which valence of our emotional life—positive or negative—is most likely to be meaningful.

Both perspectives may be at least partly right. In their classic paper ”Some Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life,“ Roy Baumeister and his colleagues zoomed in on the different outcomes associated with happiness (controlling for meaning) and meaningfulness (controlling for happiness). Whereas happiness was positively correlated with the frequency of positive events in one's life and negatively related to the frequency of negative events, greater meaningfulness was related both to a higher frequency of positive events and a higher frequency of negative events, as well as reports of more stress, time spent worrying, and time spent reflecting on struggles and challenges. What's going on here? How can meaning be positively associated with both positive and negative experiences?

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