关键词: 自我概念, 生命意义, 实验研究

Abstract: Meaning in life is besides a puzzling academic undertaking, also a daily topic. Human request for their own unique sense of meaning links to their efforts to cope with their anxiety for the unavoidable death. But factors influencing people’s meaning in life still puzzle themselves. Essentially, based on the deep understanding themselves and their relatedness to the world, people will construct their own unique sense of meaning in life. However, meaning in life originates from ones' self-concept according to Yangming Theory of Mind. Self-concept includes the cognitive component regarding who I am and the evaluation component regarding how I feel about myself. It focuses on the content and organization of self-knowledge. A stable and clear self-concept enables individuals to understand themselves, the world and relatedness to the world more accurately, and to understand their life experiences from the perspectives of a long-term goal and a higher level, and then to grasp the meaning which is hided in various life events. In order to test the effect of self-concept on meaning in life, the present study designed a field experiment with the subjects of 68 college students. We manipulated self-concept(increasing vs. decreasing) using reading materials, and then measured the relevant variables with the Wallace Self Concept Scale(WSCS), and the Presence of Meaning subscale in Meaning in Life Questionnaire(MLQ-P), the Sense of Meaning and Purpose Subscale in Purpose in Life Test, and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale-B. The results of self-reports indicated that meaning in life in the increased group with high self-concept was significantly higher than that in the decreased group with low self-concept after controlling of the pre-test effects of meaning in life as well as positive and negative effects. According to the characteristic of preference regarding cognitive processing information consistent with their self, individuals will give priority to the processing the vocabulary consistent with their self-concept. Firstly, we need a pool of vocabulary as the study materials. A former research provided us a pool of double-word vocabulary which represent high and low meaning in life, respectively. The results showed that there were significant differences in valence and arousal, but not in familiarity between 110 words representing high meaning in life and 88 words representing low meaning in life. The findings suggested that these words can be used as experimental materials to differentiate high and low levels of meaning in life in college students. And then, we did a behavioral experiment regarding words retention for a purpose of test indirectly the effect of self-concept on meaning in life. The results of words retention showed that participants in the high self-concept group were good at words representing high meaning in life rather than words representing low meaning in life, and participants in the low self-concept group were good at words representing low meaning in life rather than words representing high meaning in life. These findings suggested that there was a significant difference in meaning in life between the two groups. In sum, the above findings revealed directly and indirectly that self-concept affected meaning in life in college students. And the findings suggest that forming a strong sense of self based on the positive self-concept is the fundamental way to construct the meaning in life.

Key words: self-concept, meaning in life, experimental study