What makes me matter? Investigating how and why people feel significant

ABSTRACT

There are various ways in which, and reasons why, people can think that they matter. In three studies (total N = 1,528 US adults and undergraduates) we investigated perceptions of mattering overall, to other people (generally), to close others (like family and friends), in one’s society, and in the grand scheme of the universe. Each was a distinct construct, displaying unique patterns of association with psychological traits and mental health outcomes, including perceived meaning in life and suicidal ideation. We content-coded participants’ explanations of their overall perceptions, finding that most participants mentioned people and other Earthly concerns, whereas few mentioned the cosmos. In a randomized, controlled experiment, participants reminded of the size of the universe perceived themselves to matter less in the cosmos, but more to close others. Overall, results demonstrate important differences between forms of perceived mattering and suggest that social factors play an outsized role in overall perceptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Mattering
• significance
• well-being
• mental health
• meaning in life

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/mkfz3/

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/mkfz3/

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2168562

Notes

1. We used a fixed presentation order for the mattering scales in all studies. Although this choice does not support tests for order effects, we chose not to randomize the order because we were concerned that completing the cosmic measure would bias participants’ responses to the other mattering measures. The results of Study 3 validate this concern. There, we found that making the enormity of the universe salient to participants affected their perceptions of mattering to close others and in the cosmos.

2. Because of the relevance of perceived mattering to research on perceived meaning in life, we ran a parallel model using perceived meaning as the dependent variable. The pattern of results was identical (see the Supplemental Materials).

3. The pre-registration form is available online: https://osf.io/mkfz3/. For presentational purposes, we renumbered the hypotheses and relabeled ‘community mattering’ as ‘societal mattering.’ We made no other changes.

4. This code was added last, at a journal reviewer’s recommendation.

5. See Table S7 in the Supplemental Materials for the recommended versions of the Perceived Overall Mattering Scale, Perceived Close Others Mattering Scale, and Perceived Societal Mattering Scale.