Can we harness world travel to benefit the greater good?
Building on some of my early work (although it was actually published after this), we were interested in whether we could use post-trip reflections to prompt charitable behavior in recent travelers.
We conducted an online experiment in which we randomly assigned some participants to engage in “eudaimonic reflection” (reflecting on how their recent trip contributed to their sense of meaning and purpose in life). Other participants were assigned to engage in “hedonic reflection” (reflecting on how the trip was fun). Finally, as a control, the remaining participants were assigned to engage in “mundane reflection” (reflecting on how the trip was planned).
Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia—sometimes translated to “flourishing”—is used to refer to a specific kind of positive experience. It refers to experiences that involve one or more of the following:
- a sense of meaning and purpose in life
- a sense of personal growth or becoming our best self
- a sense of authenticity or being true to ourself
Some common examples of eudaimonic experiences are volunteering at a soup kitchen or visiting war memorials; these are positive experiences in the sense that people feel that they have a positive impact on their lives, but they aren’t necessarily fun, per se. They can be fun, but that isn’t what they are known for.
This is often contrasted with “hedonia” which is consistent with our typical conceptualization of fun and relaxation. For example, sipping mai tais on the beach. Fun, but not known for being loaded with meaning, personal growth, or authenticity.
After participants completed their reflection, we asked them to indicate the extent to which they were feeling eudaimonic emotions (compassionate, contemplative, inspired, & introspective) and hedonic emotions (excited, amused, entertained, and humored).
They then completed measures of connectedness to nature and connectedness to humanity, which we used as measures of self-transcendence.
Self-transcendence
In our studies, we define self transcendence as:
“decreased salience of the self, accompanied by a softening or complete dissolution of the conceptual boundaries between self and others, involving a sense of oneness with others and one’s surroundings”
~(Lengieza et al., 2021, p. 5)
Self-transcendence can be most easily thought of as the opposite of self-centeredness.
Finally, we gave participants an extra dollar on top of their compensation for the study and gave them the opportunity to either keep it for themselves or donate it to some charitable organizations we selected (humanitarian and environmental organizations).
The data revealed that people who reflected on meaning donated more money to charitable organizations (people who reflected on fun did not!). Based on the data, this happened because of the following chain reaction:
- Reflecting on meaning resulted in greater eudaimonic emotions.
- Greater eudaimonic emotions, in turn, resulted in greater self-transcendence.
- And, finally, greater self-transcendence resulted in greater donations.
Thus, one way we can leverage world-travel to benefit the greater good is to encourage travelers to reflect on how their trip contributed to a sense of meaning and purpose in life!
Read more:
Lengieza, M. L., Swim, J. K., & Hunt, C. A. (2021). Effects of post-trip eudaimonic reflections on affect, self-transcendence, and philanthropy. The Service Industries Journal, 41(3-4), 285-306. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2019.1636966
MeaningInNature.com 