Joo Yeon Shin

Calling in work: Secular or sacred?

Recent scholarship indicates that people who view their work as a calling are more satisfied with their work and their lives. Historically, calling has been regarded as a religious experience, although modern researchers frequently have adopted a more expansive and secular conceptualization of calling, emphasizing meaning and personal fulfillment in work. The assumption that calling can be easily secularized and applied has not been tested. Therefore, we tested whether calling was related to psychological adjustment and positive work attitudes of both highly religious and less religious college students (N = 242). We also tested whether these positive relations were mediated by people’s intrinsic religiousness or by a broader, secular construct, meaning in life. Moderation-mediation analyses supported views of calling centering on people’s experience of meaning in their work rather than more constrained religious views. Implications for future research and practical applications of calling to positive work attitudes are discussed.

The mind’s eye: A photographic method for understanding meaning in people’s lives

Although research relying on self-report inventories has built an increased appreciation of the importance of meaning in life, such research has strayed somewhat from the original promise of meaning in life research, which was to shed light on the individual experience of meaning. Some research has focused on understanding people’s sources of meaning. However, previous methods have relied on verbal ways of assessing sources of meaning in life. In recognition of the fact that not everyone has highly developed verbal skills – and that even those who do can find it hard to articulate what life means – we offer a new method for understanding individuals’ experiences with meaning in life. In this article, we describe the use of photography to elicit information about people’s sources of meaning and provide inductive qualitative analysis of a pilot study using this method. Photography holds great potential as a new method for seeing meaning through another’s eyes.

Supportive College Environment for Meaning Searching and Meaning in Life among American College Students.

We examined whether American college students who perceive their college environment as supportive for their meaning searching report higher levels of meaning in life. We also examined whether students’ perception of college environmental support for meaning searching moderates the relation between the presence of and search for meaning. Students’ perception of college environmental support for meaning searching significantly predicted their presence of meaning in life above and beyond the variance accounted for by searching for meaning and life satisfaction. The relation between the presence of and search for meaning differed by the levels of students’ perception of college environmental support for meaning searching. For students with a lower sense of college environmental support for meaning searching, the presence of meaning decreased as searching for meaning increased. In contrast, for students with a higher sense of support, the presence of meaning increased as searching for meaning increased. The findings suggest that a supportive college environment for meaning searching may promote American college students’ sense of meaning by buffering the potential negative effect of searching for meaning.

Self-concept clarity’s role in meaning in life among American college students: A latent growth approach

Abstract Meaning in life (MIL) is a fundamental building block of well-being, and MIL theory heavily emphasizes the importance of using self-knowledge to identify what makes life meaningful and to select suitable purposes to pursue in life. However, few studies have investigated this important theoretical point. The purpose of the present study was to investigate individual growth trajectories of self-knowledge, measured with a construct of self-concept clarity (SCC), and MIL. This study also examined whether the change of SCC predicts the change pattern of MIL using cross-domain latent growth analyses, controlling for the level of perceived stress. A longitudinal data-set with seventh measurement points was gathered from a total of 285 college students at a large Midwest university in the US during the period of 8 weeks. On average, a student’s levels of MIL and SCC tend to show a small amount of linear increase during the first semester of college, with individual differences in patterns of change. From a change perspective, SCC significantly predicted the sense of MIL, supporting the significance of having a clear self-view in perceiving life as more meaningful.

Thanks? Gratitude and well-being over the Thanksgiving holiday among college students

This study examined the interaction of the Thanksgiving holiday with gratitude in relation to well-being using a three-week long, daily diary design with a sample of 172 undergraduate students. Multilevel modeling revealed that without controlling for gratitude, people reported higher levels of positive affect on Thanksgiving holiday than during other days of the study. Reports of life satisfaction, meaning in life, and negative affect did not differ during the holiday. When within-person and between-person levels of gratitude were included, negative relationships were revealed between Thanksgiving and life satisfaction and positive affect. The results from this study sustain the argument that holidays impact people’s well-being depending on certain individual psychological characteristics. In the case of Thanksgiving, gratitude was critical for understanding whether the holiday appeared to positively or negatively influence life satisfaction and positive affect. The present study also supported an important role for gratitude in achieving and maintaining well-being.