Why We Should Suspect the Feeling That Life Is Meaningless

Many accept that we shouldn’t trust uncritically our feelings about life and the world. Our feelings are an important source of information, but they, too, can be mistaken. We know, for example, that some people have guilt feelings although they are in fact not guilty, and some others don’t have guilt feelings although in fact they are guilty. Thus, guilt feelings aren’t a “no-fail” indicator of real guilt; we shouldn’t decide how guilty we are by relying on our guilt feelings but, on the contrary, consider the issue rationally and adjust our guilt feelings to match our real guilt. Similarly, many of us know some people who feel that they are worse or better spouses than they really are. Again we think that their views on the matter shouldn’t rely only on their feelings but, on the contrary, that their feelings should match reality. In general, most of us accept that we should heed our feelings, but should do so with caution: We should balance our feelings with evidence and rational consideration.

But many who accept this general principle in many areas of their lives still inconsistently rely only on their feelings when it comes to sensing their lives as meaningless. Psychological research, however, suggests that our feelings about the meaninglessness of life can be easily impacted by a variety of negligible events.

In one study, researchers asked participants to inspect a series of 16 pictures in order to assess the degree of contrast in them. The pictures showed trees at different seasons of the year, four for each season. What really interested the researchers, however, wasn’t the degree of contrast in the pictures. Some participants received ordered batches of pictures: four for each season according to the order of the seasons in the year. Other participants received batches of random mixes of the same pictures. After all participants finished assessing the contrast rates of the pictures, they were asked to assess how meaningful their lives were. Those who received the unordered batches assessed their lives as significantly less meaningful than those who received the ordered batches of pictures.

In another study, participants were asked to play a video game in which players toss on screen a ball to each other’s avatars. Participants were led to believe that the other avatars in the game were moved by other players. However, this was not the case. In fact, the researchers programmed the game so that some participants’ avatars wouldn’t get the ball tossed to them at all. For the control group, the game was programmed so that participants’ avatars did sometimes get the ball tossed to them. After the game ended, participants were asked to assess how meaningful their lives are. Again, there were significant differences between the two groups. Not having a virtual ball tossed to one’s avatar in a computer game was sufficient to diminish considerably people’s assessment of the meaningfulness of their life.

Thus, our feelings about life’s meaninglessness can be easily impacted by rather trivial events, at least shortly after the events occur. We should keep this in mind the next time that we sense our life as meaningless. It may be that what impacts this sensation—which may be very strong—doesn’t have to do at all with the real degree of meaning of our life. The sensation may not be a reliable indicator of our life’s meaningfulness. As in other cases, we shouldn’t ignore such sensations, of course, but also should not rely on them blindly; we should, rather, combine and balance them with evidence and with rational consideration.