Heroism and the Pursuit of a Meaningful Life
JOURNAL OF HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY(2019)
摘要
Individuals and groups of individuals are motivated to find meaning in their activities and in life, generally. That is, when events or affective states threaten or reduce a person's sense of meaning, psychological processes are mobilized to serve the goals of meaning maintenance and meaning reestablishment, respectively. We examined two avenues for meaning maintenance: First, we considered psychological resources from the enhancing, moral modelling, and protecting functions of heroes, and second, we considered engagement in heroic behavior as a means to create meaning. We addressed contemporary heroes via conceptual and empirical literatures to discuss a variety of ways that heroes derive meaning from their own actions, and the extent to which others could glean personal meaning from a hero's characteristics and actions. We present a meaning regulation framework that explains how heroes and heroic behavior each boost meaning and the meaning maintenance processes, such as heroism as a buffer against meaning threats. We synthesized relevant literatures on meaning and heroism, and offer a framework that illustrates heroic functions in the context of meaning in life: a central, superordinate psychological variable that is familiar to many individuals and groups. This framework offers many opportunities for future research and practical application of heroism.
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关键词
heroes,meaning,existential psychology,positive psychology,self-regulation
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