Having a purpose is a definitory aspect of the human experience. Of note, having a purpose does not equate to saying “I have this purpose”. Research shows that purpose predicts physical and mental health, resilience, and delayed onset of health problems (Hill & Turiano, 2014 McKnight & Kashdan, 2009 Steger, 2012). Purpose, on the other hand, is a “central, self-organizing life aim that organizes and stimulates goals, manages behaviors, and provides a sense of meaning” (McKnight & Kashdan, 2009). Research has shown that when people have daily routines, their momentary experience of meaning in life and their well-being is higher (Heintzelman & King, 2019). ![]() ![]() In this sense, humans are meaning-making beings, one can’t endure life with no coherence, with no sense of beginning, body, and conclusion. Interesting work in this direction was conducted by Updegraff and colleagues (2008), in which they found that people who had found some meaning to the 9/11 events experienced less stress than those who had not. Not being sure what will happen the next moment increases stress levels, and physiological and psychological activation until things are put back under control (Panksepp, 1998). Great traumatic events like a car accident, sudden death of a loved one, a natural catastrophe, a global pandemic, or war, are all events that may at first keep people on the edge. People lose this when faced with circumstances that are not explainable within the framework of their previous experience (Janoff-Bulman, 1985). The sense of coherence means that the person can make sense of all or most of the events that have happened in his life. In terms of scientific rigor, the bottom-up approach is substantially better. All things considered, the best solution found is the bottom-up approach because it means to let the data speak for themselves (Bleidorn et al., 2014), whereas the top-down approach means to let the subjective understanding of the researcher define for all of us what meaning in life is, and this is not advisable until the variable of interest is sufficiently studied. The issue with the bottom-up approach is that scientists may get what meaning in life is from the majority of the population, but that does not necessarily equate with real experience (King & Hicks, 2021). The problem with choosing the top-down approach is that scientists are still not sure what meaning in life means, and by defining it they risk losing important aspects of its definition. A top-down approach, which would imply first defining theoretically what meaning in life is and then developing a measurement that will determine its presence or absence in people or a bottom-up approach, which would imply first asking people already what meaning in life is, whatever they think it is, and wait for the data to make sense and point out the defining characteristic of this psychological process. Psychologists can approach the question of what meaning in life is in two ways.
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