WHAT MAKES IT WORTH IT TO KEEP GOING WHEN IT’S NOT EASY?

Our Mission

Values are not just goals. Values are about what kind of person we want to be.

Many behavior therapies have found that value-consistent behavior is essential to protect against the negative effects of adverse events and negative emotions/thoughts. When Project Meaning started, very few studies existed that could tell us about the best methods for helping people to find meaning.

Project Meaning seeks to find out, in scientific terms, the best methods for helping people to figure out what their values are, which ones are most important, and to help them engage in value-consistent behavior across a range of settings.

Our History

Project Meaning was founded in February 2021 as a way to catalogue our research on the best methods for helping people to find meaning and purpose in their lives. Project updates will be added here in the coming months.

Our Meaningful Projects

Value clarification exercises as part of an ultra-brief intervention for mitigating the effects of social ostracism on social reengagement

This paper was published in the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science in 2021. Check it out here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212144721000405

People who are high in negative affect perceive different value clarification exercises to be useful

Preliminary results presented at the 2021 British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology conference.

Making students’ educational goals feel more meaningful

We tested the effects of three value clarification exercises on how meaningful students perceived their educational goals to be over time. Students who completed a values sorting task followed by a short writing task reported that their educational goals were more meaningful compared to before the exercise. A video presentation will be posted here shortly – stay tuned!