Financial resources impact the relationship between meaning and happiness.

Do financial resources relate to how important meaning is for one's happiness? Across three large-scale data sets spanning more than 500,000 individuals across 123 countries, we examined the relationship between meaning and happiness for individuals who vary in financial resources. Whether based on actual income level (Studies 1 and 2) or subjective assessments of socioeconomic status (Study 3), the results reveal that meaning is a weaker predictor of happiness for individuals with greater (vs. lesser) financial resources. Collectively, these studies suggest that having greater financial resources weakens the link between meaning and happiness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

It's not going to be that fun: negative experiences can add meaning to life.

People seek to spend time in positive experiences, enjoying and savoring. Yet there is no escaping negative experiences, from the mundane (e.g. arguing) to the massive (e.g. death of a child). Might negative experiences confer a hidden benefit to well-being? We propose that they do, in the form of enhanced meaning in life. Research suggests that negative experiences can serve to boost meaning because they stimulate comprehension (understanding how the event fits into a broader narrative of the self, relationships, and the world), a known pillar of meaning in life. Findings on counterfactual thinking, reflecting on events' implications, and encompassing experiences into broad-based accounts of one's identity support the role of comprehension in contributing to life's meaning from unwanted, unwelcome experiences.

Bringing the frame into focus: the influence of regulatory fit on processing fluency and persuasion.

This research demonstrates that people's goals associated with regulatory focus moderate the effect of message framing on persuasion. The results of 6 experiments show that appeals presented in gain frames are more persuasive when the message is promotion focused, whereas loss-framed appeals are more persuasive when the message is prevention focused. These regulatory focus effects suggesting heightened vigilance against negative outcomes and heightened eagerness toward positive outcomes are replicated when perceived risk is manipulated. Enhanced processing fluency leading to more favorable evaluations in conditions of compatibility appears to underlie these effects. The findings underscore the regulatory fit principle that accounts for the persuasiveness of message framing effects and highlight how processing fluency may contribute to the "feeling right" experience when the strategy of goal pursuit matches one's goal.