
A Note from Hope Katz Gibbs, publisher, Inkandescent Women magazine — It is an honor to introduce our readers to Kendall Cotton Bronk, Ph.D., the Principal Investigator for the Adolescent Moral Development Lab and a Professor of Psychology in the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Claremont Graduate University.
What she does: Her research has explored the relationship between purpose and healthy growth, the ways young people discover purpose, and the developmental trajectory of youth with strong commitments to various purposes in life. Her work has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation.
Why she does it: “As a developmental scientist, I am interested in studying and promoting positive youth development and the moral growth of young people. Most recently, I have investigated these topics through the lens of young people’s purposes in life.”
Please scroll down to learn more about Kendall’s work in a paper she recently published.
You’ll also find info below about What’s Next for Kendall!
What Makes a Purpose “Worth Having”?
In “Are All Purposes Worth Having?” (Burrow et al. 2021, this issue, DOI 10.1159/000515176), the authors astutely point out that research on purpose to date has rarely considered whether all purposes are indeed worth pursuing. This is an important question to address. In recent years, as purpose increasingly has become seen as a desirable developmental capacity, there has been a groundswell of efforts designed to foster purpose in K-12 schools, business and professional settings, and civic life (Malin, 2018). Identifying worthwhile types of purposes could provide such purpose-cultivating programs with guidance about what types of purposes they should strive to cultivate.
Conversely, identifying purposes that are unworthy on some rational basis would guide what purposes to avoid or discourage. Assuming that some purposes may be worthwhile and others unworthy, how are we to determine which? In raising this question, the authors (Burrow et al., 2021, this issue) assert that congruence and feasibility are key criteria to consider. Congruence, or the degree to which a purpose in life is supported by the individuals and institutions in the individual’s ecology (e.g., an individual’s family, community, broader culture), is the first criterion the authors propose. In the congruence standard, purposes that align or “fit” well within a person’s cultural context are likely to be worthwhile.
Feasibility, or the ease with which a purpose can be pursued, is the second criterion the authors propose. Purposes that are more readily attainable, the authors argue, are more worth pursuing than ones that are difficult to achieve.
In this commentary, we suggest that, although these 2 criteria may be useful indicators of some worthwhile purposes, they may validate some unworthy purposes. There may be purposes endorsed by an individual’s cultural context and are readily attainable but are nevertheless not worthwhile to pursue on either adaptive or ethical grounds. Moreover, there may be purposes in conflict with the present cultural context, and ones that also are difficult to pursue, that nevertheless are practically and/or morally worth pursuing.
The question of what makes a purpose worth having must be viewed from 2 perspectives: the person who commits to the purpose and the society that bears the consequences of that person’s purpose. A purpose that is “worth having” must benefit both. Often, as the authors correctly assert, a purpose that is congruent with present social norms and readily attainable will indeed benefit both the purposeful person and that person’s society – a nurse healing the ill, a parent raising children, a teacher educating students – in such cases the actors gain personal benefits and contribute to the social good. But in other cases, some purposes that are misaligned with the person’s cultural context and difficult to attain may, in fact, be worthwhile.
For example, the physicist Galileo was condemned and sentenced to house arrest for correctly determining that the Earth revolved around the sun. Here it is important to consider progressive purposes that seek to improve upon current conditions. Such purposes are likely to be ahead of their time and unpopular, albeit ultimately valuable to society.
Moreover, on the unworthy side, certain personal purposes harm others through violent acts, support unjust political systems, or destroy needed environmental resources. Are such purposes “worth having”? Before taking a deeper dive into these issues, it is important to establish what makes a purpose worthy.
More: To read the entire paper, send us an email, and we’ll share the pdf.
Your What’s Next Journal: Kendall Cotton Brock
An interview with co-authors Hope Katz Gibbs & Cynthia de Lorenzi
Hope & Cynthia: Tell us about your business/industry and where it was before the pandemic hit in March 2020, and what you were thinking about the future at the time.
Kendall: I work in higher education, as a professor of psychology. Before COVID, we held class meetings in person, but—like so many other people—we had to move online during the pandemic. I run a research lab on campus called the Adolescent Moral Development lab, and we conduct research on positive youth development more generally and on the things that give young people’s lives purpose more specifically. Fortunately, most of our research was qualitative in nature, meaning we were busy conducting interviews. We were able to move our data collection online, as well. We conducted lots of interviews via Zoom!
Hope & Cynthia: What were short-term and long-term goals at the time? How has your perspective changed, and what have you learned?
Kendall: In the longer term, I really hope to conduct research that contributes to our understanding of the internal characteristics and the external supports that help young people thrive. I want to understand what positive youth development means in different contexts and for diverse groups of young people, and I want to identify steps that parents, educators, and other adults concerned about the welfare of young people can take to help youth thrive. I believe helping young people discover a purpose for their lives is an important step in this direction. Therefore, in the shorter term, I’m studying (1) what purposes look like among diverse groups of young people and (2) the ways young people develop and pursue purposes for their lives.
Hope & Cynthia: Now the big question — What do you see coming next?
Kendall: I’m currently conducting several studies. One is exploring purpose among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors. I’m eager to learn how a cancer diagnosis shapes a young person’s views of the future and their sense of purpose in life. A second study is exploring purpose among families. How can families develop a shared sense of purpose for the things they want to accomplish in the world, and what difference does it make for families to be guided by a sense of purpose? Finally, this fall I’m eager to launch a new project that will explore Western and Eastern conceptions of purpose. More specifically, I’ll be working with a colleague in Taiwan, and we’ll be interviewing US and Taiwanese youth to understand how career-oriented purposes differ among young from these different cultural backgrounds.
Hope & Cynthia: One last question — tell us the one question we didn’t ask you — and please give us your response.
Kendall: What do you mean by purpose, and why is this something we should care about instilling in young people?
Although we all have our own ideas about what it means to lead a life of purpose, we need a more formal definition of the construct if we’re going to conduct scientific investigations of it. With that in mind, my colleagues and I proposed a definition that suggests that a purpose in life is a far-horizon intention to accomplish aims that are personally meaningful and inspired—at least in part—by a desire to make a difference in the broader world. Based on this definition, we find young people today find purpose in leading lives of religious faith, in caring for their families, in serving their communities, in creating new forms of art, in supporting political and social change, and in pursuing careers that enable them to contribute in a personally meaningful way to the world beyond themselves.
Leading a life of purpose is desirable for several reasons. First, a growing body of research finds that purpose contributes to psychological health. Compared to individuals who lack a purpose in life, those with a purpose report being less depressed, less anxious, and more hopeful and satisfied with their lives. Purpose also appears to support physical health, including better cardiovascular health, better sleep, less chronic pain—and it even contributes to longevity! A handful of studies have concluded that compared to people without a purpose in their lives, those with purpose live significantly longer lives! Finally, the purpose is also associated with indicators of academic and professional success, such as resilience, coping, and grit. For these reasons, leading a life of purpose is an important component of human thriving.