SynthesisJournal of affective disorders2024
Purpose in life and stress: An individual-participant meta-analysis of 16 samples.
Synthesis in Journal of affective disorders, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 3 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
18 citing papers in PubMed, 3 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 depressive symptoms: An individual-participant meta-analysis of >500,000 participants across six world regions.Journal of affective disorders · 2026Pooled it
- Purpose in life and c-reactive protein: An individual-participant meta-analysis of >50,000 adults.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Pooled it
- Momentary and lagged associations between purpose in life and pain intensity in daily life.Journal of health psychology · 2026Article
- Alpha and theta audiovisual interventions in a reflective chamber demonstrate acute effects on stress and burnout.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- The longitudinal relation between purpose in life and accelerometer-measured physical activity.Mental health and physical activity · 2026Article
- Purpose in life and coping strategies: Main associations and moderation by concurrent distress.PloS one · 2026Article
- Correlates of Purpose in Life and Their Potential Role in Successful Aging Among Older Adults in Rural Japan.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- Maintaining cognitive and physical health across the adult lifespan: the contribution of psychosocial factors.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Article
- Race Differences in Purpose in Life Among Family Caregivers: Findings From the Caregiving Transitions Study.Journal of applied gerontology : the official journal of the Southern Gerontological Society · 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
- Meaning in life and all-cause and cause-specific mortality in the UK Biobank.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2025Article
- The psychosocial anti-inflammatories: Sense of control, purpose in life, and social support in relation to inflammation, functional health and chronic conditions in adulthood.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2024Article
- 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
- Purpose in Daily Life: Considering Within-Person Sense of Purpose Variability.Journal of research in personality · 2024Article
- Meaning in life and Parkinson's disease in the UK Biobank.Clinical parkinsonism & related disorders · 2024Article
- Purpose in life, stress mindset, and perceived stress: Test of a mediational model.Personality and individual differences · 2023Article
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: Purpose in life is a psychological resource that has been associated with better regulation of stress. The present research reports a coordinated analysis of the association between purpose in life and subjective stress and evaluates potential sociodemographic and mental health moderators of this association. Methods: With individual participant data from 16 samples (total Results: Greater purpose in life was associated with less subjective stress (meta-analytic estimate=-.228, 95% Confidence Interval=-.292, -.164; p<.001). Interaction terms between sociodemographic factors and purpose tested in the individual samples and synthesized with meta-analysis were not significant, which indicated that the association between purpose and stress was similar across age, sex, race, ethnicity, and education. The association was also not moderated by psychological distress. Meta-regressions further indicated that this association was generally similar across scale length, content of the purpose measure, and across samples from Eastern and Western countries. Limitations: The associations reported are observational. Experimental work is needed to evaluate causality. Conclusions: Purpose in life is associated with less subjective stress across populations. Less subjective stress may be one mechanism through which purpose contributes to better mental and physical health.
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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.