Purpose in life and cognitive functioning in adulthood

ABSTRACT

With an increasingly aging population, more work is needed to identify factors which may promote the maintenance of normal cognitive functioning. The current study tested the concurrent association between sense of purpose in life and the cognitive variables of episodic memory, executive functioning, and composite cognitive functioning in adults (N = 3489, M_age = 56.3 years, SD = 12.27, Range = 32–84 years) from the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS). Correlational analyses suggested that purpose in life was associated with higher scores for memory, executive functioning, and overall cognition. Bootstrapping tests of moderation found no evidence for a moderating effect of age on purpose and the cognitive variables. Future studies should attempt to explain the mechanisms behind this relationship and explore the potential for interventions to promote healthy cognitive and purposeful aging.

KEYWORDS:

• Purpose in life
• cognitive functioning
• executive function
• episodic memory
• adulthood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Given the cross-sectional nature of the current analyses, we cannot attest to the directionality of this association. We also ran regressions using the same covariates with the cognitive variables as the independent variable and purpose as the outcome. The results yielded nearly identical standardized regression coefficients with the differences being less than .02 in magnitude compared to the analyses with cognitive functioning as the outcome.