The Functionality of Pleasure

Past research showed that pleasure enhances one’s meaning in life (King et al., 2006). In contrast, we propose that pleasure may threaten one’s meaning system in other cultures. In individualistic cultures where individuals’ hedonic happiness is highly valued, pleasure would satisfy one’s meaning in life. However, in collectivistic cultures where the welfare of the community is valued over personal happiness, pursuing pleasure would threaten one's meaning system. As a result, pleasure would function as a source of meaning in individualistic cultures, whereas pleasure functions as a motivator to search for meaning in the collectivistic cultures. Four studies (N = 937) used between and within cross-cultural comparisons to examine the culturally divergent relationships between pleasure and meaning. Post-hoc power analyses revealed that sample sizes of each study yielded adequate power for detecting medium effect sizes (1- β > .99). In Study 1, we found that Canadians’ ideal level of pleasure is greater than meaning, whereas the ideal life has greater meaning than pleasure for Koreans. In Studies 2 through 4, we tested culturally divergent outcomes of pleasure. Studies demonstrated that Koreans with high trait levels of pleasure (Study 2) and who recalled pleasurable moments (Study 3) sought more meaning than those with low pleasure, whereas the opposite pattern emerged for Canadians. In Study 4, a within cross-cultural comparison showed that Canadians with collectivistic norms showed greater meaning search when feeling pleasurable than those with individualistic norms. The findings contribute towards understanding dynamic relationships between meaning and pleasure within a cultural framework.