Does Your Life Feel Meaningful?
Having meaning, looking for it, and the two quieter things underneath
Feeling that your life has meaning and searching for meaning sound like opposites, but the research that measured them found they are almost independent. Some people have plenty and keep looking; some have little and have stopped asking. This test scores both, then adds the two ingredients that newer research says meaning is made of: whether your life makes sense to you, and whether you feel it matters.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about your life as it is at the moment, not as it was at its best or worst.
What it measures
The two subscales of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire - presence of meaning and search for meaning - plus coherence (your life makes sense) and mattering (your life counts), two components from later research. It is not a values test: the personal values test on this site asks what you care about, this one asks whether your life feels meaningful as you live it.
Based on: Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger, Frazier, Oishi & Kaler, 2006), with coherence and mattering from the tripartite model (Martela & Steger, 2016)
Possible results
Presence of meaning
How much you feel your life already has a point and a direction.
Search for meaning
How actively you are looking for meaning, whatever you already have.
Coherence
Whether your life makes sense to you as a story rather than a heap of events.
Mattering
Whether you feel your life is worth living and counts for something beyond yourself.
Common questions
Is it bad to be searching for meaning?
Not in itself. Searching is linked with curiosity and openness, and many people search while already feeling that their life has meaning. It tends to go with lower wellbeing mainly when presence of meaning is low at the same time - searching from a feeling of emptiness is harder than searching from a feeling of enough.
Is a meaningful life the same as a happy life?
They overlap but are not the same. People who find their lives meaningful are usually more satisfied, yet some of the most meaningful stretches of a life - caring for someone, building something difficult - are not especially pleasant while they happen. Meaning is more about whether life makes sense and matters than about how it feels day to day.
Can you increase your sense of meaning?
Usually yes, and more through action than through thinking. Close relationships, work that visibly helps someone, and commitments that extend over months are the most consistent sources of meaning in the research. Reflecting on your own story - how the pieces connect - also helps the coherence side, which is often the one that falls first after a disruption.
Sources
- Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The Meaning in Life Questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80
- Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology. doi:10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623
- George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2017). The Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale: A tripartite approach to measuring meaning in life. The Journal of Positive Psychology. doi:10.1080/17439760.2016.1209546
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, so scores are not comparable to its published norms. Only the first two bars correspond to that questionnaire; coherence and mattering come from a newer model and are related constructs, not factors of it. Meaning scores move with circumstances and differ by culture. This is not a diagnosis: if life has felt empty for weeks alongside low mood, talk to a professional.
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