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 (笃信宗教). 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 (相关物), 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.”
The data suggest that religiosity may play an important role: Residents of wealthier nations, where religiosity is lower, reported less meaning in life and had higher suicide rates than poorer countries.
According to the researchers, religion may provide meaning to life to the extent that it helps people to overcome personal difficulty and cope with the struggles of working to survive in poor economic conditions:
“Religion gives a system that connects daily experiences with the coherent whole (连贯的整体) and a general structure to one’s life … and plays a critical role in constructing meaning out of extreme hardship,” the researchers write.
Oishi and Diener hope to reproduce these findings using more comprehensive measures of meaning and religiosity, and are interested in following countries over time to track whether economic prosperity gives rise to less religiosity and less meaning in life.
【小题1】Which of the following questions couldn’t the participants have answered?
| A．Does your life have a purpose or meaning? |
| B．Do you have relatives living abroad? |
| C．Are you satisfied with your everyday life? |
| D．Is religion involved in your daily life? |
【小题2】Which of the following statements is true?
| A．Those who have higher life satisfaction usually have lower sense of meaning in life. |
| B．People in wealthier nations were more educated, have fewer children and express less individualistic attitudes compared to those in poorer countries. |
| C．Religion may provide meaning to life in that people can get strong support from it in face of hardship. |
| D．Wealthy people are more likely to commit suicide than poor people. |
【小题3】What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．The poorer a country is, the more religious its people are. |
| B．Economic prosperity gives rise to less religiosity and less meaning in life. |
| C．If you want to find meaning in life, you must practice a religion. |
| D．Meaning in life doesn’t have much to do with the amount of wealth one possesses. |
【小题4】The main purpose of the passage is to explain the possible reason why __________.
| A．greater life satisfaction leads to lower sense of meaning |
| B．residents of poorer nations enjoy greater meaning in life |
| C．residents of poorer nations are so religious |
| D．residents of wealthy nations have greater life satisfaction |
