Meaning maintenance model: Introducing Soren to existential social psychology

Abstract

Existentialist theorists - most notably, Kierkegaard - laid out the blueprint for our current understanding of meaning. These theorists shared a common understanding of how meaning frameworks are acquired, along with the ways that people commonly respond to violations of these meaning frameworks. Our own perspective, the meaning maintenance model, draws from existentialist theory and current theoretical perspectives in experimental psychology. In this chapter, I will summarize this meaning maintenance perspective, along with the data that supports our central theoretical conceit: a general meaning maintenance motivation underlies much of the violation-compensation literature in social psychology.