A clever psychological test reveals the subtle detail that makes us want to work harder

A recent study published in Psychological Science suggests that human beings have a deep-seated need to feel their actions matter, a drive that emerges as early as age four. The research indicates that even the tiniest amount of lasting meaning, such as knowing a small piece of artwork will be saved rather than thrown away, is enough to motivate both children and adults to choose productive effort over easy tasks. These findings hint that the desire for meaningful work is a fundamental part of human nature rather than an abstract adult concept.

In psychology, a sense of mattering refers to the feeling that one’s life and activities have lasting worth across time and space, rather than being trivial or fleeting. This feeling is considered a core component of what gives human life meaning. To understand how this need affects human behavior, a 2008 laboratory experiment showed that adults tend to work much less when their creations, such as assembled Lego figures, are immediately broken apart rather than saved. Building on this idea, a 2020 study demonstrated that feeling like one’s actions truly matter is the biggest contributor to experiencing a sense of meaning in life.

The desire to matter is not limited to adults. For instance, research covered by PsyPost in 2024 indicated that a sense of meaning in daily life is associated with better mental health and fewer behavioral problems during childhood. Together, these earlier studies formed a research progression leading to the question of whether the drive to create something lasting is a basic psychological need present from a young age or a complex desire that only develops later in life.

The research, led by Yilin Liu, a doctoral student in developmental psychology at The University of Texas at Dallas, and Fan Yang, a research associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, builds on this foundation by showing that the drive for even tiny amounts of lasting meaning emerges in early childhood.

“When I tell people that I study meaning, they often react as if it is a very big, abstract topic—almost a luxury reserved for certain people or certain moments in life,” Yang, who also directs the Human Nature and Potentials Lab, told PsyPost. “But I have always felt that meaning is much more fundamental than that. We wanted to ask whether meaning matters even for small, seemingly inconsequential actions in everyday life, whether this sensitivity to meaning emerges very early in development, and whether even a small amount of meaning can shape people’s motivation.”

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“A lot of research on meaning focuses on relatively big things, such as having a sense of purpose, contributing to something larger than oneself, or seeing an activity as personally important,” Liu added. “We were interested in a more basic question: how much meaning does something actually need to have before it starts to matter for motivation? We wanted to know whether even a very small signal that what someone does matters in some way could influence what they choose to do and how much effort they put into it, and whether this sensitivity is already present in childhood.”

To investigate this, the researchers conducted four related experiments. The first experiment involved 81 children between the ages of four and nine, alongside a comparison group of 80 adults. Participants were asked to use puzzle pieces to create heart shapes. They were introduced to two games: a “no meaning” game where their created shapes would be immediately put into a shredder, and a “minimal meaning” game where their shapes would simply be saved in a box.

The researchers found that most adults and children evaluated the game where their work was saved more positively, regardless of whether they were playing the game once or repeatedly. In a follow-up test with 138 children and 141 adults, participants were asked which game they would actually prefer to play. The vast majority of adults (up to 90 percent) and children (up to 80 percent) actively chose to participate in the game where their work was saved.

A second experiment involving 129 children and 121 adults was designed to see if people simply like seeing items saved, or if they specifically care about the fate of their own creations. Participants were assigned to either a “create” condition, where they made art from puzzle pieces, or a “watch” condition, where they simply watched puzzle pieces move on a screen. They were then given a choice between a free activity where the objects would be dismantled, and an activity that required them to give up a sticker in order to have the objects saved.

In the watch condition, both children and adults preferred the free activity. However, in the create condition, participants were much more willing to pay the sticker cost just to ensure their own artwork was preserved. This suggests that people are uniquely attached to the lasting existence of the things they put effort into making.

The strength of this early-emerging preference stood out to the researchers. “What surprised me most was how little significance seemed to be necessary,” Liu noted. “We deliberately designed the difference between conditions to be minimal, so there were many reasons to expect that participants might simply ignore it. Seeing children respond to such a subtle distinction was especially striking because it suggests that sensitivity to whether something matters may emerge quite early.”

The third experiment, involving 124 children and 121 adults, tested whether the fate of their work would motivate participants to choose a challenging task over an effortless one. Participants were given the option to either use puzzle pieces to create a specific shape or take the easy route of simply moving the pieces into a box without building anything.

When participants knew their completed artwork would be saved, 83 percent of adults and over 80 percent of children chose to put in the effort to create the artwork. When they were told their artwork would be taken apart, only 34 percent of adults and about 50 percent of children chose the effortful option.

The final experiment explored what happens when actions have no lasting consequence, testing 132 children and 119 adults to see if simply focusing on having fun could compensate. Some participants were guided through the same choices as the previous experiment, while others were placed in a “fun” condition where an experimenter pointed to a smiling emoji and emphasized that the main point of the activity was to enjoy themselves.

The researchers observed that emphasizing enjoyment did increase motivation to create the artwork, even when participants knew it would be taken apart. However, the prospect of having the work saved still provided an additional motivational boost, indicating that enjoyment compensates partially but not entirely for a lack of lasting meaning.

“Study 4 was especially surprising to me,” Yang explained. “We had expected that focusing on enjoyment might largely compensate for a lack of significance. Instead, enjoyment only partially made up for it. That suggests that enjoying an activity and feeling that it matters may play distinct roles in motivation, and that pleasure alone may not fully substitute for a sense of significance.”

These results stand in slight tension with research covered by PsyPost earlier this year, which found that long-term goal success is driven more by the intrinsic enjoyment of the process than the perceived importance of the outcome. The new research, however, examined immediate task persistence and tiny amounts of consequence in short laboratory settings, rather than tracking adherence to real-world personal goals over long periods.

“Meaning is not a luxury concern for people who already have everything else,” Yang said. “It may be more like air: it is everywhere, and we do not always notice it, but it is difficult to replace when it is missing. Our findings suggest that even in very small, everyday actions, people are more motivated when they can see some meaning in what they are doing. Meaning may therefore be a much more fundamental psychological need, and a more basic part of human motivation, than we often assume.”

There are a few things to keep in mind regarding these findings. First, the researchers defined a meaningful outcome simply as putting the finished artwork in a box to save it. In the real world, people find meaning in many small ways, such as taking a picture of their work or showing it to a friend, and the psychological impact of these different actions is still not fully understood. Also, objectively saving an item does not guarantee that a person will subjectively feel their action mattered.

“I would not want readers to conclude that any small attempt to make something seem meaningful will automatically motivate people, or that meaning overrides other factors such as difficulty, interest, rewards, or personal circumstances,” Liu added. “These were controlled experimental tasks in which we isolated a very specific form of minimal significance. The broader question of when these subtle signals matter, and when they do not, is something we still have a lot to learn about.”

Another detail to consider is that the participants strongly valued the survival of objects they personally created. It remains unknown whether this protective motivation extends to items created by other people, or if cultural differences in how people view their own identity might shift these behaviors.

“One misinterpretation I would want to preempt is that, although our findings show that even a minimal amount of significance matters for motivation, this does not mean that minimal significance is sufficient for full motivation,” Yang emphasized. “In other words, our findings do not imply that giving children or adults only minimal significance is enough, or that greater significance would not matter more. An important next step is to study whether more substantial forms of significance have stronger motivational effects in certain situations, such as when circumstances are difficult or tasks are not intrinsically enjoyable.”

Finally, the laboratory tasks focused on physical objects. In an increasingly digital world where many daily interactions leave no physical trace, it is possible that the need to create something lasting is even stronger than these simple experiments capture.

Looking ahead, the researchers hope to explore how these subtle signals shape early development. “One direction I’m especially interested in is understanding how children come to recognize that activities, objects, and experiences are meaningful in the first place,” Liu said. “I’d also like to examine different kinds of meaning, such as whether something feels important, useful, connected to a larger purpose, or valued by other people, and how those different signals shape children’s motivation and learning. Ultimately, I hope this work can help us better understand how everyday environments communicate to children that what they are doing matters.”

Yang shares a similar goal regarding human potential. “My broader question is whether some psychological needs and experiences we often think of as ‘higher-level,’ such as meaning, awe, and transcendence, are actually much more fundamental and accessible to human beings than we typically assume,” she told PsyPost. “That’s why my lab has been exploring these topics in children. I want to understand when these capacities first emerge and how they can remain part of our lives over time. Ultimately, I hope this work can help us better understand our experiential potential and, in turn, give better answers to the question of how we can not only function in life, but live well.”

The study, “Moved by the lightest touch of meaning: Even minimal significance matters for motivation from childhood,” was authored by Yilin Liu and Fan Yang.