Do Education and Intelligence Enhance Life's Meaning?

Is there any correlation between people’s level of education and their experienced meaning in life? And is there any correlation between people’s intelligence and their experienced meaning in life?

In her excellent book, The Psychology of Meaning in Life, Tatjana Schnell of Innsbruck University recounts how, as part of ongoing research on the topic, she and Bernadette Vötter (also of Innsbruck University) compared three groups. One consisted of members of Mensa—a society of people whose IQ is very high (only people with a confirmed IQ of at least 130 are accepted to this society). The second group consisted of very high achievers: These were people who consistently received extremely high grades from high school through their Ph.D. The third group consisted of randomly selected people.

Perhaps surprisingly, the first group, of highly intelligent people, scored the lowest on experienced meaning in life. The second group, the high achievers, (which also probably included very intelligent people) scored highest on experienced meaning in life.

How could the difference between these two groups be explained? One plausible explanation, which supports the view that higher education enhances meaning in life, is that members of the second group successfully coped with challenges throughout their studies. Independent results have shown that coping successfully with challenges significantly enhances experienced meaning in life. On the other hand, members of the Mensa group often did not challenge themselves as much. Their studies were not challenging to many of them, and they didn’t seek other sufficiently challenging scholarly (or other) goals. They may have been brilliant, but they didn’t do much with their brilliance. In fact, many members of the Mensa group reported that they were under-challenged.

Similarly, to succeed in the way they did, members of the second group—but not members of the Mensa group—had to show purposefulness, determination, intensity, and focus, which are also known to enhance experienced meaning in life.

Another possible explanation is that some members of the Mensa group felt that their abilities or lives were to an extent wasted. They had something that others didn’t have, but they didn’t do very much with it. This, too, can diminish one’s feeling that their life is meaningful, perhaps even to a lower average rate than that of the group of randomly selected people.

Thus, there is some empirical indication that some highly intelligent people do experience life as of lower meaningfulness than do people who aren’t as highly intelligent. But there is no indication that highly intelligent people experience life in that way because they think too much about problems such as “why am I here,” “what is the reason for it all,” or “what is my place in the universe.” The findings also don’t support the view that highly intelligent people who are not high achievers experience life as of lower meaningfulness because, in their high intelligence, they realize that life really is meaningless. It is more probable that highly intelligent people experience life as less meaningful because they do not cope with challenges as well as members of other groups do; do not try to fulfill their potential; are less focused; do not have to (or try to) live intensely and intentionally; have more reasons to feel that they wasted their lives; etc.

Further, this isn’t true of all intelligent people. Members of the second, accomplished group, who were also very intelligent but were focused, worked hard, overcame challenges, and achieved much, experienced (on average) life as more meaningful than members of the two other groups.

The findings are consistent with, or even support, the traditional folk wisdom that working hard toward worthwhile and challenging goals is indeed an important aspect of a life that is experienced as meaningful, and that refraining from that, or “taking it easy," puts one in a larger risk of sensing life as insufficiently meaningful.