Are Germans suffering from a crisis of meaning? Insights into meaning research by data of a representative German sample

Abstract

Are Germans suffering from a crisis of meaning – as supposed by Chancellor Merkel in 2005? Following a short introduction to meaning research, and differentiations of the construct of meaning in life, results of a representative study among 603 Germans are reported. Degrees of potential crises of meaning, meaningfulness, and relevance of 26 sources of meaning were assessed by the Sources of Meaning Questionnaire (SoMe, German: LeBe; Schnell & Becker 2007). Data reveal a relatively low prevalence of crises of meaning (4%) – while not-randomly missing values could be partly responsible for the low frequency. One third of the sample appears as existentially indifferent: a newly discovered subpopulation of people who neither experience their lives as meaningful, nor suffer from a lack of meaning. For this group, relevance of sources of meaning is altogether lower than for those who experience their lives as meaningful; partially, it is even lower than for individuals who suffer from a crisis of meaning. The existentially indifferent show very low values in self-knowledge, spirituality, explicit religiosity, and generativity.A multitude of sources of meaning contributes to the Germans' experience of meaningfulness in the beginning of the 21st century. Characteristic orientations are those towards morality, harmony, care, development, and community. Very low mean relevance is ascribed to explicit religiosity, followed by spirituality.Results show that the experience of meaningfulness increases with the degree of self-transcendence (depth) encompassed by characteristic sources of meaning. Meaningfulness also rises with the number of characteristic sources of meaning (breadth), and it is more pronounced, the more diverse these sources of meaning are (balance).