Meaning in life: having it and searching for it are two different scores

Someone who says they are still looking for what their life is about can be in two very different places. They may feel lost. Or they may already have a clear sense of meaning and keep asking because the question interests them. Many earlier measures gave one overall score for meaning and could not tell these two people apart.

In 2006 Michael Steger, Patricia Frazier, Shigehiro Oishi and Matthew Kaler published the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), which keeps the two apart. Our Meaning in Life test is based on it.

Presence and search

Presence of meaning is how much you feel that your life already makes sense and has a purpose. Search for meaning is how actively you are trying to find or deepen that sense. Our version has five statements for each. Presence includes "I understand my life's meaning" and "I have discovered a satisfying life purpose." Search includes "I am seeking a meaning in my life" and "I am searching for a purpose or mission in my life."

In the 2006 paper the two scores turned out to be largely independent. Knowing how much meaning someone has tells you little about how hard they are looking. That gives four combinations: people who have meaning and are not searching, people who have it and keep searching, people who lack it and search hard, and people who lack it and are not looking.

What each score goes with

In Steger's studies, presence of meaning went with higher life satisfaction, more positive emotions and less depression. Search had weaker links to wellbeing, and in several samples it went with slightly lower wellbeing.

The combination matters more than search on its own. In 2010 Nansook Park, Mihyang Park and Christopher Peterson found that searching went with higher life satisfaction in people who already had a strong sense of meaning, and with lower satisfaction in people who had little. Looking further from a secure base feels different from looking because something is missing.

Age changes the balance

In 2009 Steger, Oishi and Todd Kashdan compared people from their late teens to old age. Older age groups reported more presence of meaning and less search. Younger adults searched the most, which fits a stage of life when work, relationships and beliefs are still being chosen. A high search score in your twenties is common and on its own says little about whether something is wrong.

Our version and your result

Most of our ten statements follow Steger's wording closely, a few are reworded, and one search statement is our own: "My search for meaning in life has brought me much satisfaction." The original uses a seven-point scale from absolutely untrue to absolutely true and mixes the two kinds of statements. Ours uses a seven-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree and shows the presence statements first. One presence statement, "My life does not have a clear purpose", is scored in reverse. Because of these changes, your scores show your own pattern but may not match published norms.

Read the two scores as a pair. High presence with low search usually means a settled sense of meaning. High presence with high search often describes a curious person who keeps refining what matters to them. High search with low presence is the pattern the research links most often to distress. Your result is not a diagnosis, but if that pattern comes with weeks of low mood, talk to a doctor or psychologist.

The MLQ asks whether you have meaning and whether you are looking for it. The older tradition of Viktor Frankl asks more about goals and direction, and the Purpose in Life test covers that side. For where meaning often comes from, read how to discover your life values.