Suppose a friend reacts angrily to something you say during lunch. Immediately, your mind starts imagining potential causes. Was he having a bad day? Did I accidentally say something insensitive? Is he stressed about money?
We constantly strive to understand our world yet often struggle with ambiguity. Theoretically, any event has infinite explanations, but we cannot live with infinite possibilities. We crave closure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). When we talk or think about “meaning,” we are usually thinking about Meaning with a capital “M.” We imagine we are searching for objective Truth or some grand, cosmic significance. But psychological research suggests that our minds actually search for meaning with a lowercase “m.”
By “meaning with a lowercase m,” we refer to a subjective explanation that gives us a sense of closure, understanding, or coherence without necessarily being real or factually correct. It is simply the feeling that a cause explains an event and that the world is predictable. Social cognition research suggests we are “cognitive misers” who prioritize mental efficiency over accuracy (Fiske & Taylor, 1984). We tend to stop searching for answers as soon as we find an explanation that feels satisfying. This does not mean we have an aversion to the truth; we just do not require it to feel better.
The fascinating, and perhaps humbling, reality is that our brains are often satisfied with a story that feels like an explanation, even if it does not actually explain anything at all. We will explore this in three areas: the explanations we accept from others, the stories we construct to explain our own behavior, and finally, where we find meaning in life itself.
The Power of “Because”
A classic 1978 study involving a Xerox (copy) machine demonstrates how readily this need for meaning is satisfied. Psychologist Ellen Langer and colleagues had a researcher ask to cut in front of people waiting to use a copier (Langer et al., 1978). When the researcher asked, “May I use the Xerox machine?” about 60% of people agreed. But when the researcher provided a reason, “May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” compliance increased significantly to 94%. This makes sense. Being in a rush is a valid reason. The surprising finding comes from a third condition where the researcher said, “May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make copies?” This is a redundant explanation: everyone in line for a copy machine needs to make copies. Yet, 93% of people still let them cut in line. The word “because” triggered an illusory sense of meaning. Structuring the request like an explanation was enough to satisfy the brain’s need for coherence, even despite a complete lack of substance.
The Storytellers in Our Heads
In addition to accepting weak explanations, we manufacture them. While we assume our “meaning-making” comes from introspection, studies suggest we often simply tell stories to make sense of behavior after the fact.
In a famous study, psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson (1977) asked shoppers to choose the best pair among four pairs of identical nylon stockings. The vast majority chose the pair on the far right, simply due to their position. However, when asked why they chose that pair, nobody mentioned the position. Instead, they confidently invented detailed reasons about the superior “knit,” “weave,” or “sheerness,” even though all four pairs were identical.
Decades later, researchers Petter Johansson and Lars Hall took this concept even further with “choice blindness.” People viewed two photos of faces and were asked to pick the more attractive one. Using a sleight-of-hand technique, the researchers then handed the participant the photo they did not choose and asked, “Why did you pick this one?” (Johansson et al., 2005). Most people did not notice the switch. Instead, they immediately provided a detailed explanation of why they preferred the face they had not actually chosen. While they felt as though they were accessing their inner truth, they were simply creating a narrative to make sense of their situation.
This drive to explain works in two directions. In positive moments, explanation diminishes our pleasure; students given a dollar with a mysterious note stayed happy longer than those told why they received it (Wilson et al., 2005). But for negative events, this same “emotional dampening” serves a vital protective function. James Pennebaker’s research on expressive writing reveals that recounting trauma promotes healing—but only when the writer constructs a narrative that finds meaning in the suffering (Pennebaker, 1997). By “explaining away” the chaos, we diminish the trauma’s emotional grip (Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). This is why finding meaning is so central to therapy. Reappraisal, the act of re-interpreting a traumatic event, helps us settle the chaos of emotion into a coherent, even if imperfect, narrative allowing us to move forward (Park, 2010).
Meaning is Mundane
Even our sense of living meaningful lives does not entirely stem from greater truths. We naturally tend to think that “Meaning in Life” (the big existential kind) comes from rare, transcendent experiences or major achievements. However, studies by Samantha Heintzelman and Laura King (2019) suggest something much simpler: Routine.
Individuals who follow set routines, such as waking up at the same time every morning, drinking coffee from the same mug, or taking the same route to work, report higher levels of Meaning in Life. This does not mean that deep relationships or major life goals are unimportant; meaning certainly comes from these sources, too. But the fact that it also stems from simple habits suggests that meaning is not singularly about grand significance or deep explanation. At its core, meaning is often about pattern detection. When our environment is predictable and orderly, our minds relax. Our world “makes sense.”
The Comfort of Stories
While the notion that our sense of meaning is just a mental reflex triggered by the word “because,” a made-up story, or a daily habit can be deflating, there is also an upside: we have more agency over our sense of meaning than we think. We do not always need to find the objective, capital-M Meaning to find closure and inner peace. Instead, it is often enough to find a way to tell the story of our lives in a manner that provides coherence, structure, and a sense that, even in life’s chaos, we understand what is happening and why we are here.
References
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1984). Social cognition. Addison-Wesley.
Heintzelman, S. J., & King, L. A. (2019). Routines and meaning in life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(5), 688–699.
Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310(5745), 116–119.
Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103(2), 263–283.
Langer, E. J., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action: The role of “placebic” information in interpersonal interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(6), 635–642.
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231–259.
Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257–301.
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions. Guilford Press.
Wilson, T. D., Centerbar, D. B., Kermer, D. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). The pleasures of uncertainty: Prolonging positive moods in ways people do not anticipate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(1), 5–21.
Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). Explaining away: A model of affective adaptation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 370–386.
Author
Dr. Adi Shaked
Lecturer in Social Psychology Area
