“I want to congratuate you on creating a very stimulating and successful conference.  I got a lot from it — great contacts, discussions, and a deeper appreciation of Frankl’s work and the importance of a meaning-orientation in psychology.  All around it was very rewarding — thank you for including me.”

“Please know how very much I enjoyed the entire conference, including that final night that capped the experience in such a personal way.”

“The meaning conference was an amazing experience for me. I deeply thank you for making this opportunity to learn more about meaning and meeting all the great people who share the same vision. I do hope I can come to the next meaning conference!”

“I attended the Meaning Conference last week and I would just like to formally THANK YOU for organizing such a wonderful conference. I can honestly say that the conference was both life and career changing for me and fueled in me a passion to learn more about discovering and creating meaning and value in my life and assisting my clients in doing the same. I look forward to the next conference and I hope one day similar conferences will be held in the U.S. Thank you again…”

“Thank you for organizing the conference. It was awe inspiring and felt like I had come home.”

“Thank you so much for a wonderful conference! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. And it was a pleasure meeting Dr. Wong and yourself.”

“Congratulations on mounting such a successful Meaning conference this year. Our students really enjoyed it.”

“Thank you so much for having me at the Meaning Conference. I enjoyed meeting talented professionals…. You inspired me to continue my journey in the field of psychology. So hopefully I can positively influence people just like you do.”

“It was extraordinary conference for me and my husband. First time, after 3 years of writing my PhD thesis, that I’m with people who talk about materials I’m dealing with. Real delight. So thank you very much.”

“I want to thank you again for the opportunity to present a keynote address at the International Conference on Personal Meaning.  It was a marvelous event.  It served as a stimulus for the start of a number of new projects for me related to meaning.”

“I…want to say thank you for a very professional, informative and enjoyable conference!  This was my first year attending and I am extremely happy with all I experienced.  I am very grateful to you Lilian and all of the organizers and presenters.  I look forward to reviewing the presentations on-line because there was so much information to take in!”

“It was a pleasure and honor to help you on the conference. I’ve got the priceless experience of organizing such an event and unforgettable memories of meeting great people.”

“I wanted to email you to let you know how much I enjoyed the Meaning Conference. It was life changing for me. It reaffirmed my decision to go on this journey of self-discovery and personal development. It also made me realize just how much passion I have for this new career/calling and I’m looking forward to becoming a psychotherapist. It feels really good to look forward to something and to know that I am moving in the right direction.”

“Thank you for putting on the 2012 Meaning Conference.  I so enjoyed the experience and feel enriched by it….  I had no idea of the full extent of the work you are doing…. There will probably be some ripple effect in that they in turn will ‘pay forward’ some of what you have given to them.”

Presentations:

Student Competition Winners

1st Place
H’Sien Hayward — Adaptation to Adversity: Does Money or Meaning Matter More?

2nd Place
Yerin Shim — Understanding the Sources of Meaning in Life through Auto-Photography: A Pilot Study

3rd Place
Eric Kim — Purpose in Life and Reduced Stroke in Older Adults

Presenters who would like to include their presentations or handouts here, please e-mail drpaulwong@gmail.com. Stay tuned for updates.

(This list will be updated as new articles are published).

Video Clips

• Bita Bardi’s (Say News) Report on the screening of Viktor & I
• Keynote Speakers interviewed on Global News about shooting-spree phenomenon
• Conference Chair Dr. Paul Wong is interviewed on CTV News about the Colorado shooting

Articles

• Positive Psychology News Daily – Meaning: Extraordinary or Everyday?
• Positive Psychology News Daily – Meaning can come from Suffering AND Play
• Global Toronto: Psychologists to probe meaning behind mass shootings at weekend conference
• Huffington Post: The Study of ‘Meaning’ in Contemporary Academia
• South Asia Mail: Indian Filmmaker presents multiple award winning film on Schizophrenia
• CTV News: Does James Holmes fit the profile of a mass killer
• University of Rochester: Richard Ryan honored with Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Network on Personal Meaning
• Ming Pao Chinese Daily Newspaper
• Equities.com – The Canadian News Press Agenda for Friday, July 27

Meaning Conference photos by Charles McLafferty can be found here.

Meaning Conference photos by Lilian C. J. Wong can be found here.

If you would like to add your Meaning Conference photos to this collection, please e-mail our administrator.

Presentation Abstract:

Meaning, Emotions, and Decision Making in the Ultimatum Game

          Ultimatum game is an economic game often used to study self interest.  It is also widely used to study various aspects of human decision making.  It may involve meaning in decision making and a role of emotions in it.  In a simple ultimatum game, an allocator is required to split (at the allocator’s will) a given sum of money with a recipient.  If the recipient accepts the allocator’s splitting offer, the split moves forward and the two parties each gets their agreed share.  If the recipient rejects the split, neither gets anything.  The economic theory based on self interest predicts that the allocator would split the amount most favorable to the self (i.e., giving the lowest offer possible), while the recipient would accept any non zero offer over nothing.  However, mounting data suggested that not only the allocator did not typically act in self interest to any extreme (the mean offer from hundreds of experiments by different researchers is 60% of the sum for the allocator and 40% for the recipient, and the mode is the fair-and-square 50%/50% split), but also, the recipient typically rejects offers below 30% (when the allocator wants more than 70% of the sum), preferring to have nothing instead.  Interpretation of these “surprising” decision making results possibly involves attribution (e.g., “What would they think if I act selfishly?” (allocator); “Why offering me this unfair low amount?” (recipient)), meaning seeking (fairness and reputation), and/or meaning making (e.g., “It is good to be fair” (allocator), “It is justice to reject the unfair offers even that means I will get nothing” (recipient)); “Such unfair behavior needs to be punished” (recipient).

Emotions, including positive emotions, may play a role in decision making (Damasio, 1995, 2001; Isen & Patrick, 1983; Isen, Nygren, & Ashby, 1988).  In the ultimatum game, the perceived unfairness (attribution of being treated unfairly) invokes negative emotions that may lead to rejections against self interest (Pillutla & Murnighan, 1996).  Incidental positive emotions, then, through the “undo” effect (Fredrickson, 2003), may down-regulate such response of negative emotions’.  Positive emotions may also influence attribution (e.g., “It is not against me that the other side is doing this”), and/or meaning making (“The other side can do what they want but it will not affect me” “I have control over my own action”).

Theories and empirical evidence concerning the above will be discussed.

The ultimatum game reveals decision making processes that have similarity to health-related decision making, such as the negative emotions invoked by certain health issues (e.g., HIV screening due to stigma) that need to be down regulated.  As health-related decision making may eventually influence health, and essentially any significant decision making in life may influence wellbeing and health, attribution, meaning seeking and meaning making in decision making, and the influences of emotions on these, may have implications to cognitive science and health science alike.