meaninglessness

n. a pervasive sense of the absence of significance, direction, or purpose. A sense of meaninglessness regarding one’s life or life in general is sometimes a focal issue in psychotherapy. The perception of meaninglessness poses the central problem that the existential approach attempts to solve or accommodate. See also existential psychotherapy; logotherapy; will to meaning.

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Psychology term of the day

November 21st 2024

self-evaluation maintenance model

a conceptual analysis, related to social comparison theory, in which an individual is assumed to maintain a positive self-evaluation by (a) associating with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas with low relevance to his or her sense of self-worth and (b) avoiding association with high-achieving individuals who excel in areas that are personally important to him or her. [developed by U.S. social psychologists Abraham Tesser (1941– ), Jennifer D. Campbell (1944– ), and their colleagues]