A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that a deep-seated need to feel our actions matter can propel both children and adults to work harder, with signs of this drive appearing as early as four years old. The research team, led by Yilin Liu of the University of Texas at Dallas and Fan Yang of the University of Chicago, argues that even the smallest amount of lasting meaning can shift motivation, hinting that the longing to do meaningful work is a fundamental part of human nature.
Central to the researchers’ idea is the concept of “mattering” — the sense that one’s life and activities have lasting worth beyond the moment. They note that prior work showed adults work less when their creations are immediately discarded, and that meaning appears to be a critical contributor to a sense of life being meaningful. The new experiments extend this line of inquiry into early childhood.
In a series of four related tests, the team studied 81 children aged four to nine and a comparison group of 80 adults in their first experiment, asking participants to assemble heart shapes from puzzle pieces. They contrasted a “no meaning” game, in which the finished pieces would be shredded, with a “minimal meaning” game, in which the shapes would be saved in a box.
The results were telling: both adults and children preferred the saved outcome, regardless of whether the task was undertaken once or repeatedly. A follow‑up in which 138 children and 141 adults chose between the two options showed the vast majority would rather engage in the game where their work is saved: up to 90 per cent of adults and 80 per cent of children.
A second experiment involved 129 children and 121 adults and tested whether people merely enjoy seeing items saved or whether they care about their own creations specifically. Participants were assigned to a “create” condition, where they made art, or a “watch” condition, where they merely observed pieces move on a screen. They then faced a choice between a free activity in which the objects would be dismantled and an activity requiring them to give up a sticker to have the objects saved.
In the watch condition, both age groups preferred the free option. But in the create condition, participants were markedly more willing to pay the sticker price to ensure their own artwork was preserved, suggesting a strong attachment to the lasting existence of what they have made.
The researchers were struck by the strength of this early-emerging preference. “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.”
A third experiment, with 124 children and 121 adults, tested whether knowledge of the fate of their work would push participants toward a more effortful task. They could either use pieces to create a specified shape or opt for the easier route of placing pieces in a box without building anything.
When told their completed artwork would be saved, 83 per cent of adults and over 80 per cent of children chose the effortful option. When told the artwork would be taken apart, just 34 per cent of adults and about 50 per cent of children chose the harder route.
The final study explored what happens when actions have no lasting consequence, examining 132 children and 119 adults under a “fun” condition designed to emphasise enjoyment. Some participants faced the same choices as before, while others were steered toward focusing on having fun.
The team found that emphasising enjoyment did lift motivation to create, even when participants knew their work would be dismantled. However, the prospect of having the work saved still provided an additional boost, indicating that pleasure and lasting significance play partly overlapping but distinct roles in motivation.
Yang described the fourth study as particularly revealing. “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.”
The findings sit alongside, but differ from, earlier PsyPost reporting on another line of inquiry: long-term goal success being driven more by intrinsic enjoyment of the process than the perceived importance of the outcome. The current work focuses on immediate task persistence and tiny, short-lived signals of consequence observed in laboratory settings rather than real-world, long-haul goals.
“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.”
Researchers cautioned that their definition of meaningful outcomes was narrow—saving a completed piece of art in a box—and that real-world meaning can take many forms, such as sharing or displaying work. They warned against concluding that minimal significance automatically motivates all behaviour or that it overrides other factors like difficulty or personal circumstance.
They also noted that participants showed a strong personal attachment to items they created, and it remains unclear whether this extends to works made by others or varies across cultures. More broadly, the team says more work is needed to understand how different kinds of meaning influence learning and motivation in childhood, including in digital environments where tangible artefacts are less common.
Looking ahead, Liu said she hopes to explore how children learn to recognise and value meaningful activities, objects, and experiences, and to identify different signals of meaning—whether something feels important, useful, or valued by others—and how those signals shape motivation and learning. Yang added that she wants to investigate whether deeper forms of significance yield stronger motivational effects in challenging or less intrinsically enjoyable tasks, with the ultimate aim of understanding how to nurture human potential from an early age.
