Beauty Relevance | Psychology RC Practice

Could the secret to a meaningful life be hiding in plain sight? When modern life pulls our focus constantly toward future goals and productivity, these challenging passages invite readers to consider whether momentary awareness might offer what ambitious achievement cannot—a profound sense of meaning accessible to everyone.

Read these hard English passage(s) in Psychology and answer the question(s) that follows. You can choose the GMAT style Reading Passage and the question or the GRE RC variant and answer the GRE-style question. Even better, you could solve both.

Hard GMAT RC Passage | ~200 words

Contemporary psychological discourse on meaningful existence has predominantly emphasized three dimensions: coherence (life making sense), purpose (clear long-term goals), and existential mattering (one’s life having significance). This tripartite framework, while illuminating some paths to fulfillment, potentially undervalues alternative avenues available to ordinary individuals lacking extraordinary accomplishments. The conventional paradigm implicitly privileges grand contributions to humanity, leaving the average person’s search for meaning seemingly inadequate by comparison.

Recent empirical investigations conducted by Marsden and Harper challenge this limitation through their concept of “experiential appreciation” – defined as the capacity to derive profound connection from quotidian experiences and extract value from momentary phenomena. Their comprehensive studies involving over 3,000 participants demonstrate that individuals who cultivate awareness of everyday beauty report significantly enhanced perceptions of meaning, even when controlling for the established tripartite factors. Particularly revealing was their pandemic-era research showing that subjects who employed beauty-focused coping strategies reported markedly higher levels of meaningful existence than those utilizing more conventional approaches.

These findings suggest that in a culture obsessed with productivity and future goals, cultivating awareness of the present moment may be a powerful—and often overlooked—source of existential fulfillment, especially for those left unsatisfied by traditional models of meaning.

RC Question Type: Inference | Question Difficulty: Hard

Based on the passage, which of the following can be most reasonably inferred about the relationship between experiential appreciation and meaning in life?

1. Experiential appreciation provides a more reliable path to meaning than coherence, purpose, or existential mattering.
2. People who lack grand accomplishments must rely on experiential appreciation to find any sense of meaning.
3. Experiential appreciation functions as a compensatory mechanism when the three traditional dimensions of meaning are absent.
4. The capacity for experiential appreciation likely varies among individuals based on innate psychological traits.
5. Experiential appreciation appears to contribute to meaning in life through pathways distinct from those of the traditional tripartite model.

Challenging GRE RC Practice | ~180 words

Conventional wisdom posits that meaningful existence necessitates extraordinary accomplishment or adherence to grand purposes. However, empirical research challenges this assumption. In a landmark series of studies published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers examined the relationship between appreciating quotidian beauty and perceived life meaning. Initial assessments linked pandemic stress-coping strategies to perceived meaning, revealing that participants who prioritized aesthetic appreciation consistently reported stronger existential well-being. Follow-up studies asked participants to rate agreement with statements about beauty awareness alongside established meaning metrics such as coherence, purpose, and existential mattering. In every case, beauty appreciation predicted elevated life meaning—even after accounting for traditional factors.

In a final set of experiments, participants exposed to awe-inducing stimuli (such as nature documentary footage) exhibited measurable increases in both experiential appreciation and perceived meaning. These findings undermine the notion that existential fulfillment must come from grand life missions, highlighting instead a subtler yet potent path: attentiveness to beauty in everyday moments. In an age dominated by productivity, this form of present-focused awareness may offer a more accessible route to psychological richness and meaning.

RC Question Type: Main Idea | Question Difficulty: Medium

The primary purpose of the passage is to:

1. Critique traditional psychological frameworks that overemphasize extraordinary achievement as necessary for meaningful existence
2. Present experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that beauty appreciation contributes significantly to perceptions of life meaning
3. Propose a new psychological intervention based on beauty appreciation to address existential crises in modern society
4. Compare the relative effectiveness of different approaches to finding meaning in contemporary life
5. Examine how research methodologies in psychological studies have evolved to better measure subjective experiences of meaning