Objectives: Feelings of purpose and meaning in life are protective against consequential cognitive outcomes, including reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Purpose and meaning are likely to also be associated with cognitive functions on the pathway to dementia. The objective of the current research was to test whether both purpose in life and meaning in life are associated with higher verbal fluency and better episodic memory and whether these associations varied by sociodemographic characteristics or economic characteristics of the country.
Design: Prospective meta-analysis of cross-sectional associations based on individual participant data.
Setting: Established cohort studies with measures of either purpose in life or meaning in life and verbal fluency and episodic memory.
Participants: Across the cohorts, there were over 140,000 participants from 32 countries from North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Results: The meta-analysis indicated that purpose and meaning were associated with better performance on both the verbal fluency (meta-analytic partial r = .098, 95% confidence interval [CI] = .080, .116, p < .001) and episodic memory (r = .117, 95% CI = .100, .135, p < .001) task and that these associations were similar across measures of purpose in life and meaning in life. There was modest evidence that these associations were slightly stronger in relatively lower-income countries, and there was less consistent evidence that they varied by age, gender, or education.
Discussion: These findings indicate a robust association between purpose/meaning and both verbal fluency and episodic memory across demographic groups and cultural context. Purpose/meaning may be a useful target of intervention for healthier cognitive aging.
Keywords: cognitive aging; cross-cultural; fluency; meaning in life; purpose in life.