The Manifestation of Meaning: A Thesis on Meaning Making and Veterans

In the present study, we sought to examine how military personnel make meaning out of their military vs. civilian life experiences and the degree to which meaning violation impacts their efforts. Veterans anonymously wrote reflective essays, one about a military-related negative life experience and one relating to a civilian-related negative life experience, and completed the Global Meaning Violation Scale (Park, 2016) for each experience. We also coded for generic you (i.e. ‘you’ used generally, instead of regarding a specific individual) as this indicates meaning-making. Although our results revealed no significant difference in generic you usage depending on the condition, and no significant correlations were found between meaning violation and generic you, active-duty military personnel were much less likely to use generic-you than inactive, a category comprised of reservists/national guard, those who served in both active duty and the reserves/national guard, and other, suggesting an impact on meaning making from military status.