The science
Meaning Atlas turns decades of published meaning-science into a few minutes of plain questions. Here is exactly what it measures, the frameworks underneath it, and what we are still working to prove. We would rather show our work than impress you.
Three ideas do most of the work. Here is each one, in plain terms.
Meaning has three parts. We measure each, then combine them into one score from 0 to 100.
How strongly you sense a path, minus how much your life actually expresses it. The gap is the measurable version of "off-path."
Illustrative. The distance between the two bars is your Calling Gap.
You split 100 points by where your meaning comes from, and separately by where your time and energy go. The gap between them is the heart of the map. Because you divide your own 100 points, this compares you to yourself, never to other people.
Illustrative.
Our questions are written for this tool, but informed by, and adapted from, these established frameworks. We name them so you can check our work.
Meaning has coherence, purpose, and significance.
The spine of your Meaning Meter.
Steger et al. (2006), Meaning in Life Questionnaire ↗
Having meaning and looking for it are different, and can both be true at once.
We measure them separately, so "still looking" is never read as "has none."
Schnell (2009), Sources of Meaning ↗
People draw meaning from many sources that group into broad areas of life.
The eleven areas in your Meaning Map come from this.
Dik et al. (2012), Calling & Vocation Questionnaire ↗
Sensing a path and living it are separate, and a gap is associated with lower satisfaction even in a successful life.
The evidence behind "life can look right and still feel off-path."
Ryan & Deci (2000), Self-Determination Theory ↗
People do best with autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Your experiments are built around these levers, not generic advice.
Rosenberg & McCullough (1981) ↗
Feeling you matter to others is distinct from your life feeling significant to you.
Lets the tool speak to "useful, but unseen."
A life can feel pleasant yet thin on meaning; meaning often involves effort.
Surfaces the "comfortable, but off-path" pattern.
Cantril (1965), the life ladder ↗
A single, widely used measure of how good life feels right now.
The anchor we read your meaning against.
The modern science of meaning descends from Viktor Frankl's work (logotherapy, the idea that a drive toward meaning is central to being human). The frameworks above are part of that lineage.
Findings from the published literature that shape how we read your results.
People relate to their work in three roughly equal ways. Seeing work as a calling tracks with higher satisfaction, but a calling sensed and not lived can do the opposite.
When asked what gives life meaning, family leads by a wide margin, well ahead of career. It is why the Meaning Map starts from your own sources rather than a generic checklist.
Share naming each as a source of "a great deal" of meaning.
In long-running studies, people with the strongest sense of purpose tend to outlive those with the weakest. This is an association from observational research, not proof that purpose alone causes it.
Being straight about this matters to us more than sounding finished.