Struggle with ultimate meaning: Nuanced associations with search for meaning, presence of meaning, and mental health

Abstract

Struggle with ultimate meaning reflects concerns about whether one’s life has a deeper meaning or purpose. We examined whether this construct could be distinguished from presence of meaning in life and search for meaning. In two US samples – a web-based sample (N = 1047) and an undergraduate sample (N = 3978) – confirmatory factor analyses showed that struggle with ultimate meaning loaded on a factor that was distinct from but related to presence (negatively) and search (positively). Moderated regression analyses showed that people with low levels of presence combined with high levels of search for meaning were particularly likely to struggle with ultimate meaning. Additionally, when compared to presence and search, struggle with ultimate meaning related more strongly to depressive symptoms than presence or search. These results suggest that struggle with ultimate meaning represents a distinct component of how people grapple with meaning that has implications for mental health.

Keywords:

• Meaning in life
• search for meaning
• ultimate meaning struggle
• depression
• mental health

Notes

1. Constraining latent covariances to equality across samples worsened fit in all three models, as did removing any of these equality constraint sets, with one exception. In Model 1, freely estimating latent variances improved model fit slightly (ΔCFI = 0.006, ΔTLI = 0.004, ΔRMSEA = −0.003, ΔWRMR = 1.013). The MLQ factors had more variance in the web sample (Presence = 3.12, Search = 2.78) than the undergraduate sample (Presence = 1.82, Search = 1.71), but not Ultimate Meaning Struggle (2.97 and 2.95, respectively). This altered other parameters trivially and produced two similar sets of standardized loadings, which are available by request.