ArticleAnnals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine2018
Sense of Purpose Moderates the Associations Between Daily Stressors and Daily Well-being.
Article in Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Purpose in life and mortality: A meta-analysis of the published literature and individual-participant data of 488,765 participants followed for up to 32 years.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Purpose in life and stress: An individual-participant meta-analysis of 16 samples.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Pooled it
- Identifying factors associated with thriving after interpersonal trauma in a Canadian sample of adults.Journal of health psychology · 2026Article
- Intrinsic resting-state connectivity and personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Article
- Purpose in life and coping strategies: Main associations and moderation by concurrent distress.PloS one · 2026Article
- Purpose in life in late adolescence and incident depression over 10 years.Journal of psychiatric research · 2026Article
- A multimodal stress detection dataset with facial expressions and physiological signals.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Meaning of life and stress-coping strategies for broken heart syndrome patients.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sense of purpose and emotion regulation strategy use: A mini-review with directions for future research.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2025Review
- Trajectories of Purpose in Life Across Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease or Related Dementias in Older Adulthood.Journal of aging and health · 2025Article
- Self-control, food choices, and affective well-being in daily life: an experience sampling study.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Article
- Identifying childhood correlates of adult purpose and meaning across 22 countries (Global Flourishing Study).Npj mental health research · 2025Article
- Purpose in Life and Stress Reactivity.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Daily Fluctuations in Subjective Age among Older Adults: Links with Stressors, Positive Events, and Emotional Reactions.Gerontology · 2025Article
- Purpose in life and stress: Momentary associations from a micro-longitudinal study.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2024Article
- Article
- A review of the literature on wellbeing and modifiable dementia risk factors.Ageing research reviews · 2024Review
- Exploring Sense of Purpose and Conscientiousness as Correlates to Health and Well-Being With Indigenous and Low Socioeconomic Communities on Coast Salish Territories, Vancouver, Canada.Canadian journal of behavioural science. Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement · 2024Article
- Purpose in Daily Life: Considering Within-Person Sense of Purpose Variability.Journal of research in personality · 2024Article
- Changes in Purpose in Life and Low-Grade Chronic Inflammation Across Older Adulthood.International journal of aging & human development · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Background: Having a sense of purpose in life has been consistently demonstrated as a predictor of positive health outcomes, including less perceived stress, yet, little is known about the role of sense of purpose on stressful days. Purpose: The current study investigated the sense of purpose as a moderator of stressor-related changes in daily physical symptoms, positive affect, and negative affect. Methods: A subset of the Midlife in the United States study (n = 1949, mage: 56.4 years) reported their sense of purpose, along with up to eight daily assessments of stressors, affect, and physical symptoms. Multilevel models evaluated whether sense of purpose was associated with deviations in affect or physical symptom reporting on days when participants reported a stressor versus days when stressors did not occur. Results: Sense of purpose was associated with higher daily positive affect, lower daily negative affect, and fewer daily physical symptoms. Compared with individuals who reported lower levels of purpose, those reporting higher levels encountered the same number of daily stressors, yet showed less of an increase in negative affect and physical symptoms on stressor days than on stressor-free days. Purpose did not predict changes in positive affect in response to daily stressors. Conclusions: Findings provide evidence that a purposeful life may be characterized by lower negative affect and physical symptom reporting on stressful days.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.