The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Life Schemes: A Framework for Understanding the Search for Meaning
Abstract
A conceptual framework is presented for understanding what is meant by “finding meaning.” It is proposed that individuals have life schemes that provide a sense of order and purpose in one's life. A life scheme is a cognitive representation of one's life, much like a story, which organizes one's perspectives on the world and oneself, goals one wishes to attain, and events that are relevant to those goals. Severely negative events can challenge parts of the life scheme, disrupting one's sense of order and/or purpose. Finding meaning is a process of changing the life scheme or one's perception of the event, so that feelings of order and purpose are restored. Ways in which meaning is found, the role of attributions in the search for meaning, and the effects of finding meaning on future victimization are discussed within the life scheme framework.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change
Bandura, A. (1977) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.84.2.191 · Cited by 43,925
Attributions of blame and coping in the "real world": Severe accident victims react to their lot.
Bulman, R. J., & Wortman, C. B. (1977) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037//0022-3514.35.5.351 · Cited by 965
The Psychoanalytic Review: Dekalog
Mott, G. (2001) · The Psychoanalytic Review · doi:10.1521/prev.88.4.571.17821 · Cited by 846
STRESS, DEFENSES AND COPING BEHAVIOR: OBSERVATIONS IN PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH MALIGNANT DISEASE
CHODOFF, P., FRIEDMAN, S. B., & HAMBURG, D. A. (1964) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.120.8.743 · Cited by 224
Recovery from rape and prior life stress
Burgess, A. W., & Holmstrom, L. L. (1978) · Research in Nursing & Health · doi:10.1002/nur.4770010404 · Cited by 136
The psychodynamic significance of beliefs regarding the cause of serious illness.
Bard, M., & Dyk, R. B. (1956) · PubMed · Cited by 61
Cited by
The meaning in life questionnaire: assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life
Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006) · Journal of Counseling Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80 · Cited by 4,843
Park, C. L. (2010) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/a0018301 · Cited by 3,174
Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence.
Habermas, T., & Bluck, S. (2000) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.126.5.748 · Cited by 1,743
Meaning in the context of stress and coping
Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/1089-2680.1.2.115 · Cited by 1,821
The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations
Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1002_1 · Cited by 1,437
Metadata
- Authors
- Thompson, S. C., & Janigian, A. S.
- Venue
- Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
- Publisher
- Guilford Publications
- Published
- 1988-06
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 2-3
- Pages
- 260-280
- ISSN
- 0736-7236 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1972556532
- Cited by
- 302
- References
- 6
- FWCI
- 5.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Life Schemes: A Framework for Understanding the Search for Meaning. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1521/jscp.1988.7.2-3.260
- The paper
- Thompson, S. C., & Janigian, A. S. (1988). Life Schemes: A Framework for Understanding the Search for Meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1988.7.2-3.260
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.