Affect, connect, and grow: how self-transcendent emotions foster meaning in life

Understanding what makes life meaningful is vital for psychological well-being. Self-transcendent emotions – positive emotions that reduce self-salience and promote connectedness – may offer unique pathways to meaning in life. However, an integrative framework explaining how they do so is absent from the current literature. In this review article, we start by synthesizing existing theoretical perspectives and emerging empirical findings on three prototypical self-transcendent emotions – compassion, gratitude, and awe – and their relationship to meaning in life. Building on and extending this body of work, we develop the Affect-Connect-Grow model to illustrate the pathways through which self-transcendent emotions provide a sense of meaning in life. The model proposes that self-transcendent emotions do so by (a) eliciting positive affect, (b) promoting connection, and (c) stimulating psychological growth. Finally, we discuss the implications of the model and postulate important directions for future research.