Abstract
Not only do humans spend their lives in a densely woven web of meanings, but they also need and want meaning. Although there are a variety of reasons for why this is the case, the current chapter focuses on the function of meaning as an existential anxiety buffer. We argue that the relentless search for meaning is motivated, to a significant extent, by the uniquely human awareness of mortality. As our review of the literature reveals, meaning, at different levels of abstraction, effectively assuages the potential terror born from this awareness.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arndt, J. (2012). A significant contributor to a meaningful cultural drama: Terror management research on the functions and implications of self-esteem. In P. R. Shaver, & M. Mikulincer (Eds.). Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns. Washington DC: American Psychological Association 55–73.
Arndt, J., Landau, M. J., Vail III, K. E., & Vess, M. (in press). An edifice for enduring personal value: A terror management perspective on the human quest for multi-level meaning. In K. Markman, T. Proulx, & M. Lindberg (Eds.), The psychology of meaning. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Baillargeon, R., Spelke, E. S., & Wasserman, S. (1985). Object permanence in 5-month-old infants. Cognition, 20, 191–208.
Bassett, J. F., & Going, S. B. (2012). A terror management analysis of perceived purpose: The effects of mortality salience on attributions for occurrences. The Open Psychology Journal, 5, 20–30.
Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford Press.
Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2002). The pursuit of meaningfulness in life. In C. Richard Snyder and Shane & J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 608–628). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Becker, E. (1971). The birth and death of meaning. New York: Free Press.
Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press.
Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press.
Boyle, P. A., Barnes, L. L., Buchman, A. S., & Bennett, D. A. (2009). Purpose in life is associated with mortality among community-dwelling older persons. Psychosomatic Medicine, 71, 574–579.
Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 155–195.
Camus, A. (1955). The myth of Sisyphus. New York, NY: Random House.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1981). Attention and self-regulation: A control-theory approach to human behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Chao, M., & Kesebir, P. (2012). Culture: The grand web of meaning. In J. Hicks & C. Routledge (Eds.), The experience of meaning in life: Perspectives from the psychological sciences. New York: Springer Press.
Davis, W. E., Juhl, J., & Routledge, C. (2011). Death and design: The terror management function of teleological beliefs. Motivation and Emotion, 35, 98–104.
Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A theory of objective self-awareness. New York: Academic Press.
Emmons, R. A. (2003). Personal goals, life meaning, and virtue: Wellsprings of a positive life. In C. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the well-lived life (pp. 105–128). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Florian, V., & Mikulincer, M. (1998). Symbolic immortality and the management of the terror of death: The moderating role of attachment style. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 725–734.
Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Washington Square Press.
Friedman, R. S., & Arndt, J. (2005). Reexploring the connection between terror management theory and dissonance theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1217–1225.
Greenberg, J., Landau, M. J., Kosloff, S., & Sheldon, S. (2009). How our dreams of death transcendence breed prejudice, stereotyping, and conflict: Terror management theory. In T. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 309–332). New York: Taylor & Francis.
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). New York, NY: Springer.
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., et al. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 308–318.
Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessment and conceptual refinements. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 61–139). San Diego: Academic Press.
Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Burling, J., Lyon, D., Pinel, E., et al. (1992). Why do people need self-esteem? Converging evidence that self-esteem serves an anxiety buffering function. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 913–922.
Harmon-Jones, E., Simon, L., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & McGregor, H. (1997). Terror management theory and self-esteem: Evidence that increased self-esteem reduces MS effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 24–36.
Hart, J., Shaver, P. R., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2005). Attachment, self-esteem, worldviews, and terror management: Evidence for a tripartite security system. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 999–1013.
Hayes, J., Schimel, J., Arndt, J., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 699–739.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
Heine, S., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88–110.
Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553–567.
Kesebir, P. (2011). Existential functions of culture: The monumental immortality project. In A. Leung, C.-Y. Chiu, & Y.-Y. Hong (Eds.), Cultural processes: A social psychological perspective (pp. 96–110). New York: Oxford University Press.
Kesebir, P., & Pyszczynski, T. (2011). A moral-existential account of the psychological factors fostering intergroup conflict. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5, 878–890.
Kesebir, P., & Pyszczynski, T. (2012). The role of death in life: Existential aspects of human motivation. In R. Ryan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of human motivation (pp. 43–64). New York: Oxford University Press.
King, L. A. (2012). Meaning: Ubiquitous and effortless. In P. R. Shaver & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns (pp. 129–144). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Martens, A. (2006). Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 879–892.
Landau, M. J., Johns, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Martens, A., Goldenberg, J. L., et al. (2004). A function of form: Terror management and structuring the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 190–210.
Landau, M. J., Kosloff, S., & Schmeichel, B. (2011). Imbuing everyday actions with meaning in response to existential threat. Self and Identity, 10, 64–76.
Lifton, R. J. (1979). The broken connection: On death and the continuity of life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Mascaro, N., Rosen, D. H., & Morey, L. C. (2004). The development, construct validity, and clinical utility of the spiritual meaning scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 845–860.
Mikulincer, M., Florian, V., & Hirschberger, G. (2003). The existential function of close relationships: Introducing death into the science of love. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 20–40.
Nagel, T. (1971). The absurd. Journal of Philosophy, 68, 716–727.
Neuberg, S. L., & Newsom, J. (1993). Personal need for structure: Individual differences in the desire for simple structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 113–131.
Niesta, D., Fritsche, I., & Jonas, E. (2008). Mortality salience and its effects on peace processes: A review. Social Psychology, 39, 48–58.
Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174–187.
Proulx, T., Heine, S. J., & Vohs, K. D. (2010). When is the unfamiliar the uncanny? Meaning affirmation after exposure to absurdist literature, humor, and art. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(6), 817–829.
Pyszczynski, T., & Kesebir, P. (2013). An existential perspective on the need for self-esteem. In V. Zeigler-Hill (Ed.), Current issues in social psychology: Self-esteem (pp. 124–144). New York: Psychology Press.
Reker, G. T., & Wong, P. T. P. (1988). Aging as an individual process: Toward a theory of personal meaning. In J. E. Birren & V. L. Bengston (Eds.), Emergent theories of aging (pp. 214–246). New York: Springer.
Routledge, C., & Juhl, J. (2010). When death thoughts lead to death fears: Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals who lack meaning in life. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 848–854.
Routledge, C., Ostafin, B., Juhl, J., Sedikides, C., Cathey, C., & Liao, J. (2010). Adjusting to death: The effects of mortality salience and self-esteem on psychological well-being, growth motivation, and maladaptive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 897–916.
Sartre, J. (1964). Nausea. New York: New Directions.
Schimel, J., Simon, L., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynksi, T., Solomon, S., Waxmonsky, J., et al. (1999). Stereotypes and terror management: Evidence that mortality salience enhances stereotypic thinking and preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 905–926.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic happiness. New York: Free Press.
Shermer, M. (2011). The believing brain: From ghosts and gods to politics and conspiracies—how we construct belief systems and reinforce them as truths. New York: Times Books.
Steger, M. F. (2009). Meaning in life. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), Oxford handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp. 679–687). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Taubman-Ben-Ari, O. (2011). Is the meaning of life also the meaning of death? A terror management perspective reply. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(3), 385–399.
Tolstoy, L. (1929). My confession, my religion, the gospel in brief. New York: Scribners.
Topolinski, S., Likowski, K., Weyers, P., & Strack, F. (2009). The face of fluency: Semantic coherence automatically elicits a specific pattern of facial muscle reactions. Cognition and Emotion, 23(2), 260–271.
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Psychological Review, 110, 403–421.
Vail, K, I. I. I., Rothchild, Z., Weise, D., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84–94.
Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (1985). A theory of action identification. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Vess, M. (in press). Foundations of meaning: Death, the need for unambiguous knowledge, and the construction and maintenance of multi-level meaning. In J. A. Hicks & C. Routledge (Eds.), The experience of meaning in life: Emerging themes and controversies. New York: Springer Press.
Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1049–1062.
Winkielman, P., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Mind at ease puts a smile on the face: Psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation increases positive affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 989–1000.
Yalom, I. (1980a). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
Yalom, I. (1980b). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
Zika, S., & Chamberlain, K. (1992). On the relation between meaning in life and psychological well-being. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 133–145.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kesebir, P., Pyszczynski, T. (2014). Meaning as a Buffer for Existential Anxiety. In: Batthyany, A., Russo-Netzer, P. (eds) Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0308-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0308-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-0307-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-0308-5
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)