| Autor: |
Rogers BA; Department of Organizational Behavior, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill., Chicas H; Department of Organizational Behavior, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill., Kelly JM; Department of Psychological Science, University of California-Irvine., Kubin E; Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau., Christian MS; Department of Organizational Behavior, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill., Kachanoff FJ; Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University., Berger J; Department of Marketing, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania., Puryear C; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill., McAdams DP; Department of Psychology, Northwestern University., Gray K; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
| Abstrakt: |
Meaning in life is tied to the stories people tell about their lives. We explore whether one timeless story-the Hero's Journey-might make people's lives feel more meaningful. This enduring story appears across history and cultures and provides a template for ancient myths (e.g., Beowulf ) and blockbuster books and movies (e.g., Harry Potter ). Eight studies reveal that the Hero's Journey predicts and can causally increase people's experience of meaning in life. We first distill the Hero's Journey into seven key elements-protagonist, shift, quest, allies, challenge, transformation, legacy-and then develop a new measure that assesses the perceived presence of the Hero's Journey narrative in people's life stories: the Hero's Journey Scale. Using this scale, we find a positive relationship between the Hero's Journey and meaning in life with both online participants (Studies 1-2) and older adults in a community sample (Study 3). We then develop a restorying intervention that leads people to see the events of their life as a Hero's Journey (Study 4). This intervention causally increases meaning in life (Study 5) by prompting people to reflect on important elements of their lives and connecting them into a coherent and compelling narrative (Study 6). This Hero's Journey restorying intervention also increases the extent to which people perceive meaning in an ambiguous grammar task (Study 7) and increases their resilience to life's challenges (Study 8). These results provide initial evidence that enduring cultural narratives like the Hero's Journey both reflect meaningful lives and can help to create them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved). |
