Purpose in life and stress: An individual-participant meta-analysis of 16 samples

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 N = 108,391), linear regression examined the association between purpose in life and general subjective feelings of stress, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics.Results: Greater purpose in life was associated with less subjective stress (meta-analytic estimate = -0.228, 95 % Confidence Interval = -0.292, -0.164; 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.