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DOI: 10.1177/00221678052837792006 46: 168Journal of Humanistic Psychology

Nathan Mascaro and David H. RosenThe Role of Existential Meaning as a Buffer Against Stress

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10.1177/0022167805283779Meaning and StressNathan Mascaro, David H. Rosen

THE ROLE OF EXISTENTIAL MEANING

AS A BUFFER AGAINST STRESS

NATHAN MASCARO is in the internship year of

Texas A&Ms doctoralprogramin clinical psychology.

He was interning at Tulane Universitys Health Sci-

ences Center until Hurricane Katrina hit New

Orleans, and he currently interns at the Emory Uni-

versity School of Medicine in Atlanta. His research

interest is the assessment of existential personality

variables, the relationship of these variables to psychological well-being,

and their role in psychotherapy.

DAVID H. ROSEN is McMillan Professor of Analyti-

cal Psychology in Texas A&M Universitys Psychol-

ogyDepartment as well as professorof humanities in

medicine and professor of psychiatry and behavioral

science withinthe Texas A&M Schoolof Medicine. He

has a long-standing interest in spirituality and the

healing process and has written seven books includ-

ingMedicine as a Human Experience with DavidReiser (1985), The Tao of

Jung: The Way of Integrity (1997), Transforming Depression: Healing the

Soul Through Creativity (3rd ed., 2002), and The Healing Spirit of Haiku

with Joel Weishaus (2004).

Summary

An ethnically diverse sample of 143 college undergraduates was

used to test the hypothesis that a sense of existential meaning buff-

ers against the effect of stress on depression and hope. Spiritual

meaning as measured by the Spiritual Meaning Scale and personal

meaning as measured by the framework subscale from the Life

Regard Index-Revised weresignificantly negatively correlated with

depressive symptoms and positively correlated with hope.Spiritual

meaning, but not personal meaning, moderated the relationship

betweenstressanddepressionsuchthat there wasa strong relation-

ship between depressionand stressfor individualswith lowlevelsof

spiritualmeaning but no relationship between stressand depression

168

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 46 No. 2, April 2006 168-190

DOI: 10.1177/0022167805283779

2006 Sage Publications

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for individualswithhighlevels of spiritualmeaning. It appearsthat,thoughboth spiritualandpersonalmeaning areinversely related to

depression and positively related to hope, only spiritual meaning

moderates the relationship between daily stress and depression.

Keywords: meaning; stress; depression; hope; spirituality;

existentialism

It is contrary to our nature, from the time we first gain the self-

awareness and language use that connect our own inner worldwith the inner world of others, to do what we are asked without

havinga good reason, without askingwhy. Andalsofrom this time,

our behavior is ever more guided and motivated by the answers towhy questions that most satisfy us (i.e., our behavior is increas-

ingly determined by the meanings we obtain for our lives). Yetwithin the field of mental health research, there is a limited

amount of thorough quantitative assessment of meaning (Debats,1999;Harris& Standard,2001). This is despite ourintuitionthat a

full senseofmeaning in life,or existential meaning, isvital foropti-mal functioning and despite the zeal with which people read andclaimto have been affected by Viktor Frankls(1959/1992) primary

work, Mans Search for Meaning,1 in which he affirms Nietzschesaphorism, If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with

almost any how (Nietzsche, 1888/1976, p. 468).Progress in meaning research has been slowed by overreliance

on measures such as the Purpose In Life Test (PIL; Crumbaugh,1968; Crumbaugh & Maholick, 1964). The most popular measureof individual differences in existential meaning, the PIL is based

on a vague conceptualization of the construct (Yalom, 1980), has acomplex and inconsistent factor structure (Chamberlain & Zika,

1988a;Dufton & Pearlman, 1986, cited in Pargament, 1999; Reker,2000; Reker & Cousins, 1979), and lacks discriminant validity by

virtue of its being confounded with variables such as life satisfac-tion (Yalom,1980),social desirability (Braun& Domino,1978),anddepression (Dyck,1987). Some examples of PILtest itemsthat con-

fuse meaningwith the hypothesized consequences of experiencingmeaningare Facingmy dailytasks is a source ofpleasure and sat-

isfaction; With regard to suicide, I have never given it a second

thought; My life is running over with exciting, good things; If Icould choose, I would likeninemorelives just like this one; Life tome seems always exciting; and I am usually exuberant, enthusi-

Nathan Mascaro, David H. Rosen 169



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astic. Such confounded content vitiates PIL-based research sug-gesting that existential meaning is related to particular variablesof psychological health because the PILis a measure of psychologi-

cal healthat leastas muchasit isa measureofexistentialmeaning.Despite itsproblematic history, there hasarisenduringthepast

two decades a fair amount of quality research on the quantitative

assessment of existential meaning and its linkages with con-structs central to the field of mental health (see Debats, 1990,

1996, 1998, 1999; Debats, Drost,& Hansen, 1995; Debats, Van DerLubbe, & Wezeman, 1993; see also Wong & Frys, 1998, handbook

covering contemporary research on meaning). Regarding its con-ceptualization, theorists converge in defining existential meaningas a personshaving a sense of coherence and purpose about her or

his life (Reker, 2000;Yalom, 1980).A life full of meaningwill be per-vaded by intention such that a person feels satisfied about her or

hisreasons foractingassheorhe does (Klinger,1998).Rather thanviewing herself or himself as a victim of biological and social pres-

sures or unconscious drives toward pleasure and power, she or hewill view her or his behavior and emotions largely as functions ofher or his framework for viewing life and the pursuit of her or his

most valued commitments (Frankl, 1959/1992; Maddi, 1967).Regarding assessment of existential meaning, two related but

unique subconstructs that are linked to psychometrically soundmeasurement devices have been identified. The first of these

involves personal meaning,the extent to which someone views her

or his individual life as coherent and purposeful. The second hasbeen called spiritual meaning (Mascaro et al.,2004) and is definedas the extent to which someone views life itself as coherent andpurposeful andalso derives personal meaningfroma force that she

or he believes pervades, underlies, arches over, or transcends life.Two psychometrically sound assessment devices that measure

individual differences in reported levels of personal and spiritualmeaning have been constructed. These are, respectively, the

framework subscale from the Life Regard Index (LRI; Battista &Almond, 1973) and the Spiritual Meaning Scale (SMS; Mascaroet al., 2004).

Evidence suggests that personal and spiritual meaning arerelated to enhanced psychological well-being. Personal meaning is

the most thoroughly investigated of the concepts. As measured byeither the original (Battista & Almond, 1973) or revised (Debats,

1998) LRI framework subscale (LRI-R-framework), personal

170 Meaning and Stress



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meaninghas been foundto be related,in theappropriately salubri-ous directions, to positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfac-tion (Chamberlain& Zika,1988b;Zika& Chamberlain,1992);anx-

iety and depression (Debats, 1990; Debats et al., 1993; Zika &Chamberlain, 1992); happiness (Debats, 1990, 1996; Debats et al.,1993; Scannell, Allen, & Burton, 2002); emotional dyscontrol and

psychological well-being (Zika & Chamberlain, 1992); elation(Debats, 1990); spiritual well-being (Harris & Standard, 2001;

Scannell et al., 2002);hopelessness (Harris & Standard,2001);andvarious symptoms of psychopathology (Debats et al., 1993). As

measuredby theSMS, spiritualmeaning appears related in appro-priately healthy directions to depression, anxiety, hope, and anti-social features (Mascaro et al., 2004). Furthermore, the SMS and

LRI-R-framework were found to explain variance in hope anddepression beyond the variance explained by the Big Five person-

ality variables of neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness,openness to experience, and extraversion (Mascaro et al., 2004).

Other sources converge with data from the SMS and LRI-R-framework to support the relevance of meaning to well-being.Sig-nificant percentages of individuals suffering from psychopathol-

ogy appear to have problems revolving around meaninglessness(Yalom, 1980) or existential concerns (Addis, Traux, & Jacobson,

1995), and it has been shown that undergraduates who canremember times when they have experienced their lives as mean-

ingless are more likely to have required psychological counseling

in the past than those who cannot recall times when they felt theirlives had no meaning (Debats et al.,1995).In addition, because theSMS is clearly related to the variable of spirituality, data regard-ing the importance of spirituality for optimal emotional function-

ing support the relationship of spiritual meaning with mentalhealth. Spirituality can be defined as recognition of a transcen-

dent, meta-empirical dimension of reality (Emmons, Cheung, &Tehrani, 1998,p.405)ormore simplyas feelings, thoughts,experi-

ences, and behaviors that arise from a search for the sacred(George, Larson, Koenig, & McCullough, 2000, p. 104). The rela-tionship between spiritually related constructs and mental health

is well documented (Bergin, 1983; Emmons et al., 1998; Gartner,Larson, & Allen 1991; George et al., 2000;Levin & Chatters, 1998;

Pardini, Plante, Sherman, & Stump, 2000; Piedmont, 1999).The studies summarized above provide evidence that existen-

tial meaning has a broad relationshipwith psychological health: It




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is consistently related to fewer symptoms of psychopathology andother such negative variables and to enhanced levels of positive

variables (e.g., elation, hope, spiritual well-being). However, there

is clearly a need for research with more diverse populations, formore longitudinal or prospective analyses, and for more precisetests of existential theory. Regarding the need for more precise

tests of existential theory, it is notable that one of meanings pri-mary virtues has been theorized to be its ability to act as a buffer

against stress, such that underhigh-stress conditions more sothanlow-stress conditions, a meaning-full attitude provides an individ-

ual with resiliency against the loss of hope and against the devel-opmentof anhedonia, depressive affect, andbehavioral disengage-ment (Frankl,1959/1992; Maddi,1967).Such theory suggests that

an individuals level of existential meaning should moderate theextent to which stress induces psychological distress, particularly

symptoms of depression and hopelessness.Data andtheorysuggest that various forms of stress (e.g., major

life events, interpersonal stress, daily hassles) are related toincreases in symptoms of psychopathology (Kanner, Coyne,Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981; Kessler, Price, & Wortman, 1985;

Myers, Lindenthal, & Pepper, 1975; Rabkin & Struening, 1976).Resiliency variables, or variables that moderate the influence of

stress on the development of symptoms of psychological distress,are thereforeimportant to identify, andexistentialtheory suggests

that meaning is exactly this sort of variable. Surprisingly, there

has been little research using quality measurement devices test-ing existential meanings potential to act as a stress buffer. Conse-

quently, in the current study, we investigated the extent to whichthe positive relationship between degree of daily stressors and

depression, as well as the inverse relationship between degree ofdaily stressors and hope, becomes weaker as individuals report

higher degrees of personal and spiritual meaning. Our hypothesiswas that for individuals with higher-than-average levels of spiri-

tual and personal meaning, there would be no relationshipbetween degree of daily stressors and symptoms of depression orlevels of hope. However, for individuals with lower-than-average

levels of spiritual and personal meaning, we predicted that therewould be a positive relationship between degree of daily stressors

and depressive symptoms and a negative relationship betweendegreeof daily stressorsand levels of hope.Shouldresults turn out

as hypothesized,psychometrically soundevidence,consistentwith




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the notion that having high levels of meaning in life can bufferagainst some of thedeleterious effects ofdaily stress,wouldexist.

METHOD

Participants

A total of 143 undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychol-

ogy courses at a large state university located in the SouthernUnited States completed the self-report devices listed below in

exchange for course credit. The sample was an ethnically diverseone, of which 25 (17.5%) individuals were Asian, 13 (9.1%) were

African American, 49 (34.3%) were Hispanic, 1 (0.7%) was Native

American, 49 (34.3%) were Caucasian, and 6 (4.2%) were of other,unidentified ethnicity. Also, 77 (53.8%) of the participants were

females. The sample was rather young and homogeneous in termsof age, as the mean age was 18.69 years (SD = 0.95).

Materials

Personal meaning. The LRI-R-framework (Debats, 1998) was

used as a measure of personal meaning. Debatss (1998) revisedversion of the LRI-R-framework is slightly altered from the origi-nal in that its items are in a different order, one word was deleted

from three items,and items are rated on a scale rangingfrom1 to 3rather than from 1 to 5.The LRI-R-framework is a 14-item,Likert-

type, self-report scale assessing the extent to which an individualreports having a framework or philosophy for living. It includes

such positively worded items as, I feel like I have found a reallysignificant meaning for leading my life, and I have a philosophyof life that reallygives myliving significance, andsuch negatively

worded items as, I really dont have much of a purpose for living,even for myself, and I really dont believe in anything about my

life very deeply. The overall LRIwhich includes a fulfillmentscale in addition to the framework scalehas also been endorsed

as a good personal meaning measure (Debats, 1998; Reker, 2000),but we believe that the framework subscale is the part of the LRIthat is least confounded by affective content. The fulfillment

subscales large quantity of affective content can unrealisticallyinflate the actual relationship between personal meaning and




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outcome variables, which tend to be saturated with affective con-tent (for expanded discussion of this issue, see Mascaro et al.,2004). The LRI-R-frameworks coefficient alpha in the current

study was .81.

Spiritual meaning. The SMS (Mascaro et al., 2004) was used as

themeasure of spiritual meaning.The constructof spiritual mean-ing is defined as belief that life or another power of which life is a

function has a purpose, will, or way in which individuals partici-pate. The concept involves the perception that life itself has mean-

ing that individuals can not only discover but in which they canparticipate in a way that results in a sense of calling or of feelingcalledonby life topursuea particular purpose.The developmentof

the SMS and its psychometric properties are described elsewhere(Mascaro et al., 2004). To the original 14-item version of the SMS,

we added an item (Something purposeful is at the heart of thisworld.) that accorded with the essence of the spiritual meaning

construct. Thus, the final version of the SMS is a 15-item, Likert-type,self-report inventoryto which participantsrespond on a scaleranging from 1 to 5 (I totally disagree to I totally agree). In the cur-

rent study, the SMS had a coefficient alpha of .91. To ensure thatthis updated version of the SMS retained its homogeneity and

single-factor structure, we subjected the 15 items to a maximumlikelihoodfactoranalysis,allowing a single factortobeextracted.

Depression. Participants depression levels were obtained usingthe depression scale from the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales(DASS-depression; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995a) and the BeckDepression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck,Steer, & Brown, 1996). The

DASS is a 42-item, Likert-type, self-report inventory that dividesinto three scales that measure depression, generalized anxiety

symptoms, and the more physiological symptoms of anxiety thatoften characterize panic attacks. The DASS has been shown to

have excellent reliability and validity and to compare favorably tothe Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories (Brown, Chorpita,Korotitsch, & Barlow, 1997; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995b). The

DASS-depression contains such items as, I couldnt seem to expe-rience any positive feelings at all, and I felt sad and depressed,

for which participants indicate the extent to which the statementhas characterized them, on a 4-point scale ranging from0 to 3,dur-

ing the pastweek. In the current study, itemnumber38, I felt that




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life was meaningless, was deleted from all analyses because it isclearly confounded with the construct of meaning. Without thisitem, the DASS depression scales coefficient alpha in the current

study was .91. The BDI-II is a 21-item, self-report inventory mea-suring depressive symptomatology. For each item, the participantchooses one of four self-evaluative statements that range in sever-

ity from0 to3 and thatmight havecharacterized her orhimduringthe past 2 weeks.There is strongsupport for the validity and incre-

mentalutilityof the BDI-II relative to the original BDI (Beck etal.,1996; Dozois, Dobson, & Ahnberg,1998). It contains items ranging

in severity, for instance, from I do not feel sad to I am so sad orunhappy that I cant stand it, and from I do not feel I am worth-less to I feel utterly worthless. In the current study, the BDI-II

had a coefficient alpha of .88.

Hope. Participants levels of hope were assessed using SnydersAdult State Hope Scale (ASHS; Snyder et al.,1996) and the Herth

Hope Scale (HHS;Herth,1991). TheASHS hasdemonstratedgoodconstructvalidity (Lopez,Ciarlelli,Coffman,Stone,& Wyatz,2000;Snyder et al., 1996). It consists of two factors: one called agency,

pertaining to an individuals perceived will to ends or goals, andanother termed pathways, pertaining to the persons awareness of

means or pathways to those ends or goals. The scale contains sixitems to which participants respond on an 8-point, Likert-type

scale ranging from 1 to 8.It includes suchitems as, If I shouldfind

myself in a jam, I could think of many ways out of it, and At thepresent time,I am energeticallypursuing my goals. In thecurrentstudy, itscoefficient alpha was .78. Herths (1991)measure of hope,which has also exhibited good reliability and construct validity

(Arnau, Rosen,Finch, & Rhudy, 2002; Herth,1991), taps a broaderconstruct than Snyders instrument, containing a hopelessness

component containing such items as, I feel overwhelmed andtrapped, and I feel scared about my future, a component similar

to thatofagencycontaining suchitems asIhavegoals for the next3-6 weeks, and I am committed to finding my way, and an addi-tional component tapping a slightly spiritual optimism and per-

ceived social support, containing such items as, I can seek andreceive help,andI believe that good is alwayspossible. Themea-

sure has 30 items,each rated on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 to3.For all analyses, item number 24, I know my life has meaning and

purpose, was deleted because it is confounded with the construct




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of meaning.Not including this item, the HHSs coefficient alpha inthe current study was .87.

Stress. To assess the degree of minor stresses or daily hasslesfaced by each participant within the past 24 hours, we adminis-tered theDaily StressInventory (DSI;Brantleyet al., 1987),which

is a checklist of 58 unpleasant events, each of which participantscan endorse and rate on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (occurred

butwasnot stressful) t o 7 (causedme to panic).Of the various waysof computing DSI scores, the SUM score, which is computed by

totaling the ratings for each participant,appears to have the high-est correlation with other stress measures (Brantley et al., 1987).This was the score used inthe current investigation.The DSI SUM

score has good reliability and validity (Brantley et al., 1987), indi-viduals SUM scores are significantly lower on weekends than on

weekdays (Brantley, Cocke, Jones, & Goreczny, 1988), and theirscores are associated significantly with physiological indicators of

stresssuch as increasedlevelsof cortisol andvanillylmandelicacidlevels (Brantley, Dietz, McKnight, Jones, & Tulley, 1988).

Procedure

During two consecutive semesters, the aforementioned partici-

pants were recruited to complete the measures noted above. Indi-viduals completed these measures in groups no larger than 40 at

various times throughout the two semesters.All participants gavetheir informed consent before participation and were given coursecredit in return for volunteering to participate.

RESULTS

Statistical Analyses

To determine the general relationships among personal andspiritual meaning, depression, hope, and stress, Pearson correla-

tion analysis was employed. Because of the number of simulta-neous correlations involved, a significance level of p = .01, as

opposed to the standard .05, was adopted. As mentioned earlier,our hypothesis was that meaning would moderate relationships

among stress, depression, and hope such that individuals experi-




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encing high levels of meaning would demonstrate a weaker posi-tive relationshipbetween stressanddepression anda weakerneg-ative relationshipbetween stressandhope than would individuals

experiencing lowlevels of meaning.Hierarchical regressionanaly-siswas used to test this prediction. Eight regression analyses wereperformed in total, four for personal meaning predicting each of

the outcome measures and four for spiritual meaning predictingeach of the outcome measures. For each analysis, DSI scores were

entered in Step 1 predicting BDI, DASS-depression, HHS, orASHS scores. In Step 2 of each regression, we added scores for the

respective meaning variable, and in Step 3, we added the scoresreflectingthe interactionbetween the respectivemeaning variableand DSI scores (i.e., meaning scores multiplied by DSI scores). We

observed whether or not adding the interaction term significantlyimproved the amount of variance explained in the respective out-

come variable and whether or not the beta weight for this interac-tion term was in the hypothesized direction (i.e., negative when

predicting BDI-II and DASS-depression scores and positive whenpredicting HHS and ASHS scores).

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics arelisted in Table 1.2 Means andstandard

deviations for all measures were comparable to those from otherstudies that utilized nonclinical populations.

Factor Analysis of the SMS

Factor loadings for a maximum likelihood analysis of the 15

SMSitems, with 1 factorextracted, aredisplayedin Table2.Ascanbe seen, all items loaded adequately on the extracted factor, which

accounted of 42.8% of the variance in item responses. The one fac-tor solution to the data resulted in a chi-square value of 182.8 (p

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