Abstract
The relationship between the degree of ikigai (the Japanese word for one's sense of purpose in life: Kumano, 2005) and views on life and death were investigated. Participants were 1,137 college students (635 males and 502 females). The degree of ikigai was evaluated by using the Purpose In Life test (PIL test) developed by Crumbaugh and Maholick (1964, 1969). We used Part-A of this questionnaire that is composed of 20 questions. Additionally, views on life and death were assessed by a questionnaire composed of five questions that was developed by he authors, which referred to life after death, reincarnation, life lesson, soul mate, and the law of causality hypotheses. Results indicated that the mean PIL score for both sexes was 92.1±16.6, with the mean female score being higher than the male. The histograms of responses to the views on life and death questions indicated bimodal distributions, i.e., responses tended to be “believe or not believe.”Females tended to choose “believe the hypotheses” more often compared to males. The group that responded “Yes” to the questionnaire on the views on life and death tended to have a higher PIL score than those that responded “No”. These results suggest that people who believe the spiritual hypotheses tended to have higher ikigai.
