Abstract
Rather than considering human potential in terms of an unrealized desired state, what if we framed it as gaining momentum in worthy long-term pursuits? This conceptual article, integrating ideas and findings from several scholarly literatures, explores how life purpose can serve as a meaningful, intentional guide for individuals, especially youth, to direct their other potentials into prosocial contributions to society. The argument (a) considers life purpose itself as a form of intrapersonal giftedness different from academic giftedness; (b) describes how life purpose could include distinctions of further potentials: coherence among purpose dimensions, influence on different life domains, reach of others impacted by the youths’ contributions, emphasis to change society, and precocious emergence of purpose’s dimensions and distinctions; and (c) muses how life purpose’s directing of other potentials might become a potential that could be realized by all youth.
What Is Potential?
Potential derives from the Latin word for potency, meaning power. Youths’ potential stems from beliefs that youth have some—usually intellectual—power their society values (Dai, 2010). Yet, potential encompasses several connotations: possibility, becoming, and latency. In short, it addresses power yet to be, or what a young person could do in the future.
An assumption is that someone must have a potential for something. Usually, educators think of an end state, such as reaching a test score threshold, award criterion, or prestigious occupational role. Potential makes visible a path from a person’s current state to the valued end state. Gifted youth are believed to have more potential in an academic domain because they get on the path at an earlier age, are further along the path than their peers, or better accomplish the tasks or travel faster along the path (see Dai, 2010, for overview).
However, perhaps potential is most powerful not when it is aimed toward achieving an end state, which ends the potential by realizing the state. Instead, potential could catalyze further potential under the direction of a life purpose—an “enabling condition” (see Dai’s article, “Rethinking Human Potential From a Talent Development Perspective,” this issue) that eventually manifests as an internalized, psychological, self-directing “compass” residing at Dai’s third-level epistemic stance of “construction of self and future” involving “intentional states.”
Stories of exemplary youth with purpose abound in recent news: Malala educating girls worldwide, Greta Thunberg addressing climate change, Emma González and other student activists protesting for stronger gun control, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other millennials running for political office. But more prevalent are youth who develop purposes in various, more quotidian domains—raising families, or providing health care, farming, app design, and so on. Purpose need not be exemplary to be useful and valued (e.g., “Giving Back,” 2019; Ulrich, 2018).
Here is the proposition I explore: A life purpose projects an anticipated life trajectory of youths’ individual desired future effect of their lives in the world (see also Reilly, 2009; Steger et al., 2008). This is a trajectory with no established end state, but rather a direction that generates life momentum (Moran, 2017) by harnessing other potentials and talents to make contributions along the way. Purpose catalyzes potential by focusing on empowering intentional efforts to contribute to a greater good in an open-ended, self-perpetuating manner (Moran, 2017). Thus, life purpose might be considered a second-order conductor of first-order potentials.
An Inclusive Exploration
Although a full treatment of theoretical concerns for my argument is too extensive for this article, I offer a brief note. I take an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach (e.g., Ambrose & Cross, 2009) toward integrating life purpose with theory and research addressing both gifted and typical populations to stimulate scholar and educator conversations that address person–situation interactions in which purpose contributes to gifted behavior or in which purpose itself may be considered gifted.
I incorporate evidence from a variety of sources for three reasons: (a) life purpose is relatively new to the giftedness literature, and I do not want to eliminate possibilities too quickly, (b) several controversial giftedness theories involve integration (e.g., profiles; Moran & Gardner, 2006a), person–environment interactions (e.g., crystallizing experiences, boosters or triggers; Seider, 2007; Seider et al., 2009), and dynamic development (e.g., qualitative change in form or composition; Bailey, 2011; Dabrowski & Piechowski, 1977) that are often not easily assessed psychometrically (Bordei, 2017; Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006) although several researchers still pursue psychometric approaches (e.g., Armstrong, 2017; Bailey, 2011; Falk et al., 1999; Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006; Shearer, 2013), and (c) my argument aims to generate interest in devising better research methods as well as pedagogical insights.
I mention controversial theories such as Gardner’s multiple intelligences (see Waterhouse, 2006) and Dabrowski’s positive disintegration/overexcitabilities (see O’Connor, 2002), in part, because they are controversial—not yet fully supported nor debunked—and because they continue to offer insights, especially to practitioners working directly with youth (Chen et al., 2009). These theories take a “midlevel” perspective on development useful in classrooms and youth programs (i.e., not one specific behavior or capacity such as visual tracking, nor grand all-encompassing concepts such as general intelligence or personality), and I believe scholars have a responsibility to make their work pragmatically useful.
Thus, I propose how findings addressing more specific concepts/phenomena intersect with midlevel theories to inform potential in giftedness related to life purpose. Theoretical constructs may be studied using different terms across disciplines (Piechowski, 1997; Rinn & Reynolds, 2012; Salovey & Mayer, 1990; Vuyk et al., 2016), and theories can provide insights at a different level of analysis than what empirical research has so far addressed (Gardner & Moran, 2006; Moran & Gardner, 2018). For example, studies on self-regulation (Pintrich, 2004) and life narrative (McAdams et al., 1997) can inform how life purpose fits with the computational capacity of intrapersonal intelligence (Gardner, 1983) even if multiple intelligences theory was not an espoused frame of these studies (Davis et al., 2011). Likewise, studies of moral and ethical sensitivities (Narvaez, 1993; Tirri & Nokelainen, 2007), striving toward “possible selves” (Oyserman & James, 2009), “fruitful alignment” (Moran, 2010b), and cognitive and self-transformation in resilience (Pals, 2006; Tebes et al., 2004) can inform the “disintegrative” development of purpose’s beyond-the-self dimension—especially if giftedness itself is considered risky—even though overexcitabilities to correct moral transgressions were not mentioned in these studies (Dabrowski, 1964).
Life Purpose and Its Development
I draw on Damon’s (2008) conception of purpose as a life aim that integrates the following four dimensions: personal meaning or emotional significance, intention to pursue the aim into the future, engagement of the aim through focused actions, and expected prosocial impact of one’s efforts beyond self-gain. Purpose does not adhere to a task, for example, as an objective that explains why a student should perform the task. Instead, a purpose applies to a life extending beyond students’ school years (Moran, 2016b). The purpose serves as an evaluative criterion for the continuing development of the student’s own potential over time.
Life purpose is similar to the following concepts: self-authorship (Magolda, 2008) because life purpose also provides an internal organization of individuals’ life trajectory; future orientation (Nurmi, 1991) because life purpose also emphasizes the possibilities ahead; possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) because life purpose also conceives who individuals could become; prosocial intentions (Berndt, 1981) because life purpose also recognizes how individuals’ actions affect others, and controlled behavior (Marken, 1990) because life purpose both enables and constrains actions to best pursue the purpose. Life purpose integrates these other concepts into a self-motivating, self-directing, self-regulating “compass” that focuses perception on opportunities to contribute to society in a self-chosen way (Moran, 2017).
Somewhat controversial (Waddington, 2010), Damon’s definition of purpose requires individuals to understand how their contributions are entwined with the contributions of others. Life purposes, like threads, interweave to form a social tapestry that structures the opportunities of contemporary and future community members’ purpose pursuits (Moran, 2017). A purpose orients not toward self-gain, personal preference, or liking, although it does build upon personal interests. Interest comes from Latin inter + est to “be between.” It is a relationship between a person and some aspect of the environment. Purpose is motivated momentum to positively impact others—known others such as family and friends or unknown others such as voters or consumers—in a personally meaningful way, such as by preserving valued social-cultural traditions or instigating prosocial change.
Life purpose is associated with feeling positively about making prosocial contributions (Moran & Garcia, 2019). Purpose development involves perceiving opportunities to contribute and gaining feedback from communities and events (Moran, 2017; Moran & Opazo, 2019). It is more likely experientially derived than directly taught in school (Moran et al., 2013; Moran, 2016b). Some pedagogies like service-learning can be fruitful for purpose development (Moran, 2018), but educational institutions have room to improve supporting purpose through service (Jiang & Gao, 2018; Moran, 2019b; Opazo et al., 2018).
Life Purpose in Academically Gifted Youth
Purpose development may be particularly urgent for academically gifted and talented youth because their strong intellectual talents are expected to make substantial contributions to society (Ambrose & Cross, 2009; Freeman, 2000). Gifted youths’ pluripotentiality and/or unusual profiles suggest that how they develop and deploy their talents may have far-reaching effects (Ambrose, 2016). Numerous pressing problems and opportunities presently exist, including climate change, income inequality, sustainability, pollution, migration, and conflict (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016). As globalization brings into contact diverse cultures and individuals and alters social institutions, the need grows for life purposes to self-direct individuals and maintain the social fabric not only within but across in-groups (Ambrose, 2016; Moran, 2019a).
Life purpose provides the “vision” within Renzulli’s (2002) houndstooth model that interweaves youths’ talents with moral concern. If the intellectual potential of gifted youth is not realized through prosocial contributions, then the society may not fulfill its collective potential (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). It is important for gifted students to have right reasons and moral motivations that help them integrate what is important to them with what is important to a greater good (Ambrose & Cross, 2009; Dai et al., 1998).
My position accords with scholarship arguing that talent is not a static trait but rather the interaction of personal proclivities with situational affordances to generate exceptionally strong performances (Dai, 2010). Several giftedness theories (e.g., Dabrowski & Piechowski, 1977; Dai, 2010; Gagné, 2004; Gardner, 1983; Gruber, 1989, 1997; Renzulli, 2002; Sternberg & Wagner, 1982) and explanations in studies where IQ or other traditional indicators of giftedness did not predict the expected talented performance (e.g., Brigandi et al., 2016; Coleman & Guo, 2013; Cox, 1926; Tirri, 2016) have suggested the concept of purpose—or similar concepts such as self-regulation, prosociality, and moral concerns.
Despite these mentions of purpose-related concepts, few empirical studies have directly linked academic giftedness and life purpose in youth. One recent study comparing 64 gifted and 139 typical youth found weak correlations (Bronk et al., 2010). Of note, in interviews, academically gifted youth showed low interest in moral impact, like typical youth, but were precocious in establishing self-serving life goals. A small-sample interview study in Turkey, based on the same Stanford Youth Purpose Project Protocol as Bronk et al.’s (2010) work, came to similar conclusions: Younger gifted students tended to have similar purpose profiles as university students with a more specific focus on relationships and career success; only a few mentioned contributing to “societal good” in general terms (Celik & Mertol, 2018). Two case studies offered hope that some gifted youth deploy their talents for long-term prosocial impact (Reilly, 2009). A historical review of extraordinarily gifted individuals who used their abilities for evil outcomes also emphasized that a prosocial aim is critical in purpose development, stressing that gifted programs should include moral education (Tannenbaum, 2001).
In studies indirectly examining Damon’s (2008) meaning, intention, engagement, and prosocial impact dimensions of life purpose separately, academically gifted students showed mixed results. Most of these studies used a “bottom-up” approach to look at how particular academic tasks connect to longer-term perspectives. Academic tasks that at first were merely pleasurable could become meaningful over time (Coleman & Guo, 2013). IQ correlated with prosocial concepts such as perspective-taking (Mendaglio, 2003), helping others (Dabrowski, 1964), ethical or moral sensitivity (e.g., Hollingworth, 1942; Silverman, 2011), and moral reasoning (e.g., Lee & Olszewski-Kubilius, 2006; Narvaez, 1993), although high-IQ students may overestimate their moral skills (Tirri & Nokelainen, 2007).
A few studies took a “top-down” approach focusing on the role of a purpose in gifted youths’ daily decisions and activities. Personal meaning could help sustain students’ engagement in school (Brigandi et al., 2016). Students who pursued goals were more self-regulating (Perrone-McGovern et al., 2015) and more likely to tie education to their futures (Brigandi et al., 2016). But the focus remained limited to in-school activities rather than a wider life perspective.
Life Purpose as a Potential in Intrapersonal Intelligence
The power of life purpose is neither limited to schooling nor to academically talented youth, and perhaps it should not be yoked to academic achievement. Life purpose itself may be a gifted form of intrapersonal intelligence (Moran, 2009a). On its own merits, life purpose may be an orientational potential defining oneself in terms of one’s contributions. Because intelligences are computational capacities, intrapersonal intelligence generally analyzes information about the self: It defines “I” (Moran & Gardner, 2006a). Many traditional views of giftedness do not include intrapersonal intelligence, one of the less emphasized information-processing potentials in Gardner’s (1983, 1999) multiple intelligences theory. However, even though self-development research has existed for decades (e.g., Harter, 1998; Kegan, 1982; Loevinger, 1976; Perry, 1970), scholarly interest is increasing in the processing of self-relevant information and self-regulation at the “midlevel” of intelligences (Moran & Gardner, 2018).
Life purpose brings intrapersonal intelligence under more nuanced self-regulation (Moran, 2009a; Moran & Gardner, 2018; see also Gagné, 2004; Siegle, 2013; Sternberg & Wagner, 1982). Self-regulation requires practice in setting up and applying criteria to bootstrap one’s own development (Pintrich, 2004; Zimmerman, 2008). Life purpose provides an internal compass for youth themselves to navigate staying on course (Damon, 2008; Moran, 2017). It regulates internal control despite difficulties, distractions, or boredom (Oyserman & James, 2009; Yeager et al., 2014). Yeager and colleagues’ cross-sectional survey and behavioral task, longitudinal intervention, and naturalistic field experiment studies involving more than 2,000 adolescents and young adults showed that a self-transcendent purpose maintained student effort on a tedious task by considering future possibilities that made the task meaningful.
A literature review showed self-regulation can support development of the personal meaning and intention dimensions of purpose such that purpose and self-regulation can reinforce each other (Van Tongeren et al., 2018). A large-scale, multimethod study of 783 seventh graders in Scotland found a strong, reciprocal connection between life purpose and intentional self-regulation (Linver et al., 2018). Life purpose may be particularly self-regulating in how youth appropriate culturally valued goals, imbue those goals with personal meaning (Kawai & Moran, 2017; Moran, 2014b), align their behavior with those goals even in turbulent or ambiguous situations (Moran, 2017, 2019a; Oyserman & James, 2009), and anticipate the impacts of their behavior over time (Lewis & Oyserman, 2015), including beyond their own lifespans (Moran & Gardner, 2018). Life purpose processes information regarding future self-concept to self-regulate behavior in the present (Moran, 2017). One’s future self becomes a criterion for one’s present self to assess perceptions, decisions, and actions (Marken, 1990; Oyserman et al., 2004; see also the role of self-understanding in talent development in Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993, and Dai et al., 1998).
Life purpose also puts other discipline-based intelligences, such as linguistic or naturalistic or logical-mathematical, in service to intrapersonal intelligence by harnessing their outputs toward personally meaningful effects on the world (Moran & Gardner, 2018). In particular, life purpose brings interpersonal intelligence under the guidance of intrapersonal intelligence by considering the impact of one’s efforts on others (Moran & Gardner, 2018). Intertwined in this way, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences could catalyze each other to create an amplifying feedback loop of empathy, perspective-taking, and moral concern in purposeful people (Moran, 2014a; Moran & Gardner, 2006b).
Life purpose also could bring existential concern under the guidance of intrapersonal intelligence by connecting the self to the extremes of what is too large or small, too fast or slow, or too far away to be sensed, or beyond one’s own existence (Moran, 2014a; Motl, 2009). Existential concern has been studied primarily in terms of meaning-making by adult moral exemplars (Colby & Damon, 1992). It has been less examined in youth populations, although there is growing interest from a clinical perspective (Berman et al., 2006). Whereas interpersonally prosocial individuals concentrate their moral impact on people they know or conceivably could meet, individuals with existentially prosocial life purposes address aims involving more abstract “others,” such as making a positive impact on future generations, social institutions, other life forms, the environment, and abstractions such as tolerance or justice (Moran, 2010a, 2014a).
This recent theoretical extension of Gardner’s intrapersonal intelligence suggests that purpose may be an emerging tool for youth to more autonomously deploy their own intellectual profiles during tenuous, uncertain times (see Moran, 2019a). Furthermore, life purpose expands the power of intrapersonal intelligence beyond understanding what the “self” is or experiences. A purpose also maps what the “self” affects (Moran & Gardner, 2018)—eventually, perhaps, giving rise to a more transcendent, existential intelligence addressing the meaning of ultimate concerns (Moran, 2014a).
Life Purpose as a Potential to Orient Other Talents Toward Prosocial Contribution
A life purpose shifts the focus of high potential from an academic status to a self-regulative process to build life momentum. Youth have jagged potential profiles containing both strengths and difficulties, and how these profiles manifest depend on context. Tracking the development and functioning of students’ life purpose could provide educators with an important indicator of the direction youth are proceeding (Moran, 2019b). Purpose can add helpful personal meaning to setbacks to keep students motivated and on track toward their envisioned future despite temporary disappointment, and purpose can show how current actions lead to further possibilities (Malin et al., 2017; Moran, 2016b; Oyserman et al., 2004; Yeager et al., 2014). As a result, life purpose may better anticipate potential contributions to society, culture, and history than test scores of intelligences or other capacities (Moran & Gardner, 2018).
Thus, life purpose could be viewed as a talented (Gagné, 2004) or excellent (Dai, 2010) form of life goal that stretches individuals’ future orientation beyond satisfying their own needs toward making one’s mark on the world (Moran, 2017). Whereas generic life goals aim to achieve a desired end to benefit oneself, life purpose recognizes and celebrates how one matters to something greater (Moran, 2009a, 2019a). Life purpose focuses on the connection between individual potential and community needs and benefits (Moran, 2018; Tirri & Nokelainen, 2007).
The prosocial dimension of life purpose makes life purpose less common than generic life goals. Several studies drew from an American sample, aged 12 to 22 years, aiming for gender balance and matching racial/ethnic/socioeconomic status distribution of the surrounding communities of five each: colleges or community colleges, high schools and middle schools in the rural south and west, urban east coast, and suburban west coast. Data came from 1,200 surveys, 270 interviews, and 146 re-interviews 2 years later with students initially in their 6th, 9th, 12th, and 14th–15th year of education (see Malin et al., 2014, for detailed demographics table). Only one in four of the interviewed youth indicated a life purpose (Moran, 2009a). The largest group (40%) had no aim or integrated few dimensions of purpose. The most socially supported and normative tendency developmentally was to set life goals that aimed to benefit only the individual (Malin et al., 2014; Moran, 2009a; Moran et al., 2013). Yet, case studies of nine youth with exemplary life purposes demonstrate exceptional potential to impact others (Bronk, 2012). A mixed-methods study and theoretical elaboration showed that life purposes focused on expanding tolerance (12%) or designing creative options (16%) to benefit society can contribute to cultural development (Moran, 2009b, 2010c, 2015).
Among the 146 students interviewed twice, the foundations of this prosocial dimension arose first as empathy in middle school (Malin et al., 2014). But prosocial orientation can be lost over time if not attached to an intention to continue considering others over the long-term and, perhaps most keenly, to opportunities to act prosocially. Consider two potential life purposes to which youth might commit: (a) to allow children to learn and play safely in the neighborhood or (b) to support independence of people with disabilities. Youth must find personally meaningful ways to engage these purposes, perhaps through (a) crime watch programs, gun control activism, or healthier playgrounds, or (b) training guide dogs, inventing assistive technologies, or devising treatments. Without engagement, one’s aim remains a dream, an unstable state that rarely lasts long (Malin et al., 2014; Moran, 2009a). If youth did not find or forge sustaining outlets for prosocial engagement, they tended to revert either to a self-oriented life goal or to no purpose at all (Moran et al., 2013). Therefore, developing a life purpose itself is rather extraordinary.
Exemplars of Life Purpose
Exemplary life purpose fundamentally depends on a person’s proclivity to see ambiguous situations in terms of how others might benefit, then to do something that promotes prosocial outcomes (Moran & Gardner, 2006b). Purpose exemplars view themselves and their life through their effects on others (e.g., Colby & Damon, 1992; Daloz et al., 1996). The prosocial dimension becomes central to why they believe their lives are important (Damon, 2008; Moran, 2014b). Qualitative studies of adult exemplars address altruistic acts in both historically heroic and more everyday ways (Oliner, 2003; Oliner & Oliner, 1988), commitment to the “common good” (Daloz et al., 1996), benefits to later generations (McAdams et al., 1997), and creative acts of generosity (Gruber, 1997).
More recently, youth exemplars have drawn attention. Malin et al. (2014) presented a normative trajectory for purpose development from middle school through college. Compared with this normative trajectory, Bronk’s (2012) nine youth purpose exemplars, at an earlier age, noticed something in the community that needed doing and decided they would be the one to do it. Their purposes developed over time as their actions became more personally meaningful and generated prosocial impacts that led to positive feedback. As the exemplars aged, their strengthening purpose influenced career, location, and relationship choices, which further anchored the purpose as central to their lives.
Matsuba and Walker’s (2005) young adult prosocial exemplars integrated purpose’s four dimensions. They were more perceptive of God or nature as a larger “presence” and more attuned to others’ suffering, which was meaningful to them and led to later intentional experiences of engagement that included self-sacrifice. They made meaning of negative experiences in terms of their positive outcomes and based their self-concept on prosocial impact on others. Interestingly, these exemplars did not differ from peers on self-reported altruism. It is possible that prosocial impact could become so core to the self that it is no longer consciously considered and only automatically enacted.
Other exemplar studies did not address prosociality specifically within a purpose framework. Care exemplars did not differ from peers in moral reasoning nor in the cognitive complexity of their interpersonal intelligence. But their self-concepts incorporated moral terms based on their personal philosophy and ideal self rather than on more normative peer influences (Hart & Fegley, 1995)—they had an internal compass. These exemplar studies support Dabrowski’s (1964) overexcitabilities concept of developing “an inner imperative to correct social wrongs” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 378). Although a recent study subsumes overexcitabilities into openness-to-experience (Vuyk et al., 2016), it is Dabrowski’s specific emphasis on sensitivity to prosocial opportunities that is relevant here.
Social activism and creativity exemplars could be further distinguished by their stronger attention to and interest in issues that have long-term, far-reaching effects. These change-oriented exemplars worked to build a pathway not only for themselves but more broadly for their society or culture (Hart & Fegley, 1995; Moran, 2010a). Because change-oriented work often goes against the conventions of the time, self-regulating, self-supporting purpose may be particularly critical to have (Folguieras & Palou, 2018; Moran, 2015a).
Life Purpose’s Exemplary Distinctions of Potential
So far, I have argued that life purpose itself may be a distinct form of human potential, separate from academic potential. Life purpose requires four developmental dimensions to integrate so that the purpose can direct other potentials toward contribution to a greater good. Studies of exemplars suggest that further potentials within life purpose are possible (Moran, 2015b). That is, once youth commit to a life purpose, additional exemplary distinctions may be pursued. The five distinctions discussed below—coherence, influence, reach, change, and precocity—have not been clearly elaborated as gifted forms nor extensively researched empirically. Yet, findings from prior research suggest they deserve more attention.
Coherence
Coherence entails an integration of intention, meaning, engagement, and contribution to such degree that these dimensions are difficult to parse. Even normative purpose requires all four of Damon’s (2008) dimensions to support each other. But these dimensions do not necessarily develop in tandem. Cross-cohort and developmental studies describe asynchronous growth that results in precursor forms to life purpose (Bronk & Finch, 2010; Damon, 2008; Malin et al., 2014; Moran, 2009a). The most commonly studied are dabbler, which involves engagement in prosocial endeavors lacking personal meaning or intention; dreamer, which involves personally meaningful and prosocial intention lacking engagement; and self-oriented goal seeker, which entails personally meaningful and engaged intentions lacking prosocial impact.
Yet, even when all four dimensions integrate, there can be variation in the tightness of their integration. The dimensions start to mutually influence each other such that they are no longer noticed for themselves but for how they catalyze the other dimensions to build life momentum. The meanings youth give to events and actions, the intentions they build from meanings, and the impacts they expect from their plans reinforce a singular narrative thread for the purpose (Colby & Damon, 1992; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; Matsuba & Walker, 2005; McAdams et al., 1997; Oyserman & James, 2009).
Commitment is the glue of coherence. Although initially searching for and committing to a purpose may be stressful because it is perceived as a choice among various alternatives (Rainey, 2014), commitment reduces stress and increases efficiency (Kashdan & McKnight, 2013) because the purpose prioritizes where to direct efforts (Bronk, 2012). Coherence improves the opportunity to practice one’s purpose more holistically (Colby & Damon, 1992).
For example, one college student, Sam (pseudonym), aims to open a horse-based therapy program for youth with mood disorders because his brother suffers from depression (Stanford Youth Purpose Project, 2006). Sam works on a horse farm now, but his intentions don’t provide a clear narrative of his future. He says he will go into finance to make money to buy a horse farm, and his prosocial vision is limited to his brother. Although Sam conveys all purpose dimensions, they don’t cohere narratively.
Conversely, another student, Toru (pseudonym), aims to share the Japanese tea ceremony widely so that others from any ethnic background can benefit from the beauty, mindfulness, and grace of the practice (Stanford Youth Purpose Project, 2006). Every week, he holds tea ceremonies in his dorm to train friends to share the ceremony with others. He has written course papers and student newspaper articles about the tea ceremony. Next year, he’s planning a tea ceremony “intervention” to help college students ease their anxieties. This storied structure suggests Toru distinguishes himself in coherence.
Influence
Influence is the involvement of life purpose across many life domains and its strength in guiding perceptions and actions in those domains (McKnight & Kashdan, 2009). For example, generally students are expected to link academic and career domains, but this may not occur if their conception of academics’ influence does not align with other social identities or self-efficacy (Oyserman & James, 2009). Purpose’s life domains need not be extraordinary, such as national politics or Nobel-level science. Helping parents make meals or translating documents for immigrant neighbors count as influence in family and civic domains (Kiang, 2011). Most youth prefer for their purpose to influence only a few life domains, most often family and career (Damon, 2008; Moran, 2009a).
As with coherence, commitment seems to be the driving consideration for influence. As commitment strengthens, more domains of life come under the purpose’s purview. Yet, social imagination and generativity also may play roles because influence requires going beyond current venues of influence to link one’s contributions to wider spheres and future generations (Moran, 2016a; Moran & Gardner, 2018). For example, an enterprising youth might extend a hobby into a paid position to explore the aim, or recruit family to be employees for a start-up, or connect the purpose to serving God’s will, or train the next generation in a hobby (see Bronk, 2012; Malin et al., 2014). A more influential purpose would be expected to generate more opportunities to act on the purpose because the compass scans more life domains.
For example, two young adults may express a purpose to raise civic-minded children to pass on the meaningful community-spirit values they inherited from parents. Maria may pursue this purpose by enrolling her children in a community-minded charter school while she works as a corporate lawyer. Four times a year, they participate in park clean-up, homeless shelter food service, charity walk-a-thons, and school supplies donations to poor families. Maria’s purpose directly influences two out of three life domains: parenting and community service, but not career.
The other person, Rasheda, starts a nonprofit school that designs lessons integrating all subjects around social justice problems and offers these lessons online to public schools. Her own children attend this school, and as they get older, they help design curricula. She and her children participate in social justice community events, but also build a resource center at the school for policy discussions that can be understood and engaged by teens and younger children. Even her exercise regimen addresses her purpose as she and her children walk the neighborhood daily to talk with people, tend plantings, and pick up trash. Rasheda’s purpose is distinguished in its influence.
Reach
Reach concerns how many other people are affected by the person’s life purpose and how diverse the conception of those “others” is. Whereas most youth focus their purpose’s prosocial impact close to home (Moran, 2009a), distinctive reach extends prosocial impact beyond known others to consider people not personally known as well as abstract, far-reaching, or systemic concerns, such as animals, ideas, institutions, or the environment. Typical life purposes with narrow reach include supporting a family, providing local services, or opening a “main street” small business or neighborhood organization. Wider-reaching purposes generally include government policymaking, diversity and social justice concerns, arts, manufacturing, medical or public health innovation, environmental efforts, and economic or weather forecasting by which the output can reach others more broadly.
For example, studies show that advocating for systemic social justice has further reach than direct volunteer work with specific individuals because it is likely to impact a wider variety of people (Dik et al., 2012; Einfeld & Collins, 2008; Folgueiras & Palou, 2018; Moran & Opazo, 2019). However, because reaching people outside one’s in-group usually takes longer, wider reach also can delay feedback on the person’s impact, which can create more uncertainty about the purpose (Moran, 2010a, 2010c, 2017).
Curiosity may be the driver of reach. Youth who pursue far-reaching purposes are likely to view novelty and difference as something to explore rather than avoid (Kashdan & McKnight, 2009). Interacting with the new and the different takes extra effort because common meanings may fail, so interpersonal giftedness may play a role in social flexibility and tolerance (Mendaglio, 2003; Porath, 2000). Moral imagination and generativity may be needed if the reach extends to impacting future generations, abstractions, or nonhumans because the person must anticipate the challenges and possible outcomes of change over time (Moran, 2016a; Narvaez & Mrkva, 2014).
Wider reach can benefit not only the purpose pursuer but also the community because the more people reached, the more widely the impact can ripple across social networks. For example, the effects of a purpose to transform migration policies could reach not only migrants, but citizens, families of both migrants and citizens, employers, and the neighborhoods in which they live. Eventually, it could influence movement patterns across borders and what migration means symbolically.
Change
Change addresses the extent that a life purpose transforms rather than perpetuates current norms and institutions (Moran, 2010, 2015a). Conventional life purposes most often follow established rules, career paths, religious tenets, and leisure pursuits. Change-oriented life purposes typically include avant-garde arts, paradigm-shifting science, social justice efforts, infrastructure development, and speculative fiction. Case studies of exemplary adult creators suggest they may feel a purpose, a moral imperative to improve the world (Gruber, 1993).
In a study of 270 American adolescents and young adults, about three of four focused their life purposes on normative pursuits (Moran, 2010a). But one of six (16%) youth aimed to invent new symbols or products through creativity, although these youth often didn’t consider the prosocial impacts of their creations. Another one of eight (12%) relatively older youth aimed to promote diversity and understanding through tolerance, most who did realize that their aims have impacts on others (Moran, 2010a).
Imagination probably is the primary driver of change-oriented purposes—envisioning something different than what already exists. Change-oriented purposes might be considered the most exemplary of purpose’s potential distinctions because, if the change is achieved, these individuals are lauded as innovators or geniuses for enabling new capabilities for the entire society (Moran & John-Steiner, 2003). Some change-oriented purposes not only add to the cultural repertoire but also can overhaul the culture to generate new norms, customs, values, and institutions (Moran, 2016a). A literature review of creativity argued a key societal role for creativity is to improve society (Moran, 2010c).
Despite this important societal benefit of creativity, youth with change-oriented purposes tend to take more eclectic routes because they initially may lack social supports or endorsement by societal and cultural leaders (Malin et al., 2014; Moran, 2010a, 2015a). Change-oriented purposes tend to incur more costs to the person making the change (Putnam, 2007), so these individuals may require purpose to proceed and persevere (Gruber, 1989). Because moral “goodness” is often anchored to current norms (Moran, 2016a), change-oriented purposes may be considered immoral at first (Gino & Ariely, 2012), even though prosocial motivation and originality have shown positive correlations with creativity (Grant & Berry, 2011).
One study of 160 Catalan university students found that change-oriented purposes in a turbulent society were considered prosocial; those aiming to change the way people think or solve a problem in an unusual way expected their efforts to produce more benefit to society than engaging more traditional prosocial goals such as community volunteering or helping others in need (Folgueiras & Palou, 2018).
Precocity
Precocity means starting earlier, progressing faster, or achieving a milestone younger than the norm. For example, several studies found that intellectually gifted students can be precocious in sensing moral issues within a situation (Roeper & Silverman, 2009) or reaching higher moral judgment stages (Moran & Gardner, 2006b). Exemplar studies suggested that a “trigger event” early in life can launch precocious purposes (Bronk, 2012; Matsuba & Walker, 2005; McAdams et al., 1997).
On average, of 270 American youth interviewed, a majority did not transition from having no purpose to developing a focus on something meaningful until ninth grade (approximately age 14 years). By high school graduation (approximately age 18 years), 33% were pursuing self-oriented goals and 23% prosocial life purposes, although 36% remained without an espoused purpose; and by mid-college (approximately age 20 years), 84% were equally split between self-oriented life goals and prosocial purposes, with only 10% espousing no purpose (Moran, 2009a). In contrast, several of Bronk’s (2012) purpose exemplars discovered their purpose's aim in early elementary school, well before the expected milestones for prosocial empathy in middle school, engagement role-finding in high school, and intentional path-finding in college (Malin et al., 2014).
As a mental representation of oneself prosocially contributing over one’s lifetime, life purpose is believed to require formal reasoning (Damon, 2008). Much youth purpose research has assumed a lower age limit of 11 to 12 years old, the approximate age when abstract thinking arises. But how life purpose functions in daily life may not depend on abstract thinking. Instead, the possibility of precocity for gifted potentials of coherence, influence, reach, and change may draw from emotions and experiences available to younger children, which stimulate and support curiosity and imagination, which can give rise to commitment in adolescence (Moran & John-Steiner, 2003).
Precocity in coherence may be based on emotions. For example, consider a girl, aged 14 years, who already imagined a clear future life story of helping animals. Although too young to work with animals, she enjoyed volunteering in hospitals or singing in nursing homes (Moran, 2014b). This early emotional commitment to help others generally is transferable to animals.
Precocity in influence may focus on making connections between perceiving and doing. Based on a feedback-loop model of purpose development and functioning in a person’s life (Moran, 2017), children’s and youths’ repeated engagement in situations in which they can see the effects of their efforts on others provides concrete perceptions of their influence. For example, children comforting their younger siblings or even their pets reinforces self-perceptions of helpfulness. Similarly, high school students in vocational programs that build storage sheds for local homeowners can see their contributions every time they drive by houses with sheds in their backyard and think, “I made that!” (Moran, 2016b). Youth with earlier opportunities to do community service, witnessing or other religious outreach, hands-on projects, and leadership roles may show precocity in purpose influence (Moran & Garcia, 2019).
Precocity in reach may arise from fascination with difference. For example, consider a boy, aged 9 years, noticing through a TV infomercial that African children did not have easy access to clean water like he did. He lived on a different continent, but that did not stop him from learning more and eventually starting to generate interest in others to help him raise money to build wells (Bronk, 2012).
Precocity in change orientation may be catalyzed by a “maker mentality” (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014) that drives a person to devise a better way. “Better” can take on various meanings, from more efficiency, to reframing a problem, to clarifying options. For example, a high school student working on professional film projects realized he could use movies to change attitudes about social justice issues (Moran et al., 2013). Similarly, a college student realized that teaching immigrants to speak the local language made the whole neighborhood friendlier (Moran & Opazo, 2019).
However, precocity in one or more of these purpose potentials does not necessarily mean precocity in all. Levels of each of these purpose potentials could be as jagged as profiles of intelligences or other capabilities. For example, pop star Michael Jackson’s musical career seemed to epitomize precocity in reach and change, yet suggested deficits in influence because all of his potential and efforts went toward one domain—music. Furthermore, biographical details suggested the coherence of his purpose was low as he struggled to strongly integrate personal meaning (see Tordjman et al.’s article “Rethinking Human Potential in Terms of Strength and Fragility: A Case Study of Michael Jackson”, this issue).
Moving Forward: Life Purpose as a Potential for Everyone?
Human potential is open-ended and momentum generating. So is life purpose. Dai (2014) emphasized “intrapersonal self-organization and divergent trajectories” and “purposeful acts” for optimal development of youths’ potential. Rather than high potential entailing achievement of a valued task by a select few who are rewarded, high potential could signify increasing momentum for everyone with a purpose to guide them toward further potential.
This more egalitarian view on life purpose supports the paradigm of talent development for all (Treffinger & Feldhusen, 1996). Both the jagged profiles of multiple intelligences theory (Gardner, 1983) and the interaction among individuals in a community suggest that categorizing youth as “high potential” or “low potential” can waste much of the culture’s collective talent (Rose, 2016). Helping youth meaningfully and intentionally engage their potentials in worthy aims means everyone can have a place in society and a viable response to “Why am I?” Education shifts to supporting all youth to develop self-regulation and mastery applied to worthy aims (Moran, 2016b, 2019a; Seider et al., 2009).
Drawing from various scholarly literatures, I suggest life purpose as an organizing concept to deepen our approach to human potential. Several connections made among past studies show the value of life purpose for developing the potential of both individuals and communities. Individuals who pursue purpose enjoy longer lifespans, higher well-being, life satisfaction, social connection, hope, and resilience (Bronk et al., 2009; Hill et al., 2016; Hill & Turiano, 2014; Steger & Kashdan, 2013). The prosocial impact dimension of purpose by itself relates to personal growth over the lifespan (Hill et al., 2010). Communities benefit through their members’ dedication to civic engagement, service, community improvement, and helping each other (Bronk, 2012; Colby & Damon, 1992; Daloz et al., 1996; Matsuba & Walker, 2005; McAdams et al., 1997; Rockenbach et al., 2014).
In addition, using life purpose rather than achievement to gauge human potential may increase flexibility and adaptability of societies. As change accelerates, educational institutions may become misaligned with youths’ needs for “emerging assets” demanded by a more uncertain future (Moran, 2019a, 2019b). Life purpose requires individuals to intentionally consider their anticipated contribution to that future, then to weave their life purpose thread into their community’s and society’s tapestry of socially connected contributions (Moran, 2018). In this sense, all life purposes fulfill an expressively creative role in the ongoing development of culture and society (Moran, 2010c, 2015b). Some scholars suggest that life purpose transfers some power to decide what will be later valued in society from shared worldviews to individual meaning-making (Moran, 2019a).
Much work remains to be done by both researchers and educators. I have taught a “What is my purpose in life?” college seminar for many years (Moran, 2018), and I have observed individual teachers trying to incorporate life purpose (Moran, 2016b). Research on how teachers develop their own life purpose and teach their students to live purposefully has grown tremendously (see Malin, 2018; Tirri et al., 2018). Yet, few schools or colleges infuse life purpose through their curricula or provide educational supports for students to explore Damon’s (2008) four dimensions (e.g., Moran, 2016b, 2019b). Even less likely are educational programs to support the five exemplary distinctions of life purpose discussed in this article.
Therefore, it is important to start this conversation among researchers and practitioners across gifted and talented education, positive youth development, moral education, prosocial behavior, and developmental psychology. By suggesting ideas in this article to provoke scholarly discussion, empirical research, and educational design, the hope is that together we might harness the potential of life purpose not only as a concept but as a powerful psychological mechanism by which youth can self-direct their own potential into worthy prosocial contributions that benefit us all. Realizing this potential may become crucial: Development of purpose may become required of all youth as collective worldviews and their supporting institutions splinter with the rise of technologies and migrations (Moran, 2019a). Without educational supports, all youth may feel like they are forging their own life purpose by themselves while the world has become more complexly interwoven (Moran, 2019a).
Footnotes
Author’s Note
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funder. Parts of this paper were presented at the 2015 international conference of the Queensland Association for Gifted and Talented Children, Brisbane, Australia.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Early drafts of this paper were made possible in part through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
