The Existential Quest: Doubt, Openness, and the Exploration of Religious Uncertainty

ABSTRACT

Terror management theory suggests people can manage existential concerns through faith in their cultural systems, including religious beliefs. It is not clear, however, how people with a religious “quest” orientation manage such existential concerns. The present research explored the intersection between existential concern and religious quest. Quest individuals experience doubt, which comes at the cost of greater death-related anxieties (Study 1, n= 654), cognitions (Study 2, n = 167), and vulnerability against mortality reminders (Study 3, n= 226). Second, mortality salience (MS) led people high in quest to become more culturally open-minded (Study 4, n = 100), and less likely to believe-in or commit-to their supernatural agent (Study 5, n = 120). These responses were mitigated when quest individuals were first prompted to explore (a step toward resolving) their doubts and uncertainties (Study 6, n = 462). Implications for quest orientation and existential defense- vs. growth-motivation are discussed.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Emily Brown, Jill Hoffman, Claire Martinez, Ana Padgett, and Maddie Weinstock for their assistance with data collection. Studies 1–5 were presented previously as a poster at the annual conference for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/.

Open practices statement

All studies, measures, manipulations, and exclusions are disclosed; all materials, anonymized data, and commented analytic syntax/code for each of the present studies are available here: https://osf.io/7g3be/?view_only=273fccbecd46453192ddbe42590c9b4b.

Notes

¹ Note that we rely on two single-item measures here in Study 1; this is not necessarily a limitation, as single-item measures may often be conceptually suitable and ideally efficient (Brehm, 2004).

² The G*Power ANCOVA model was selected for sample size planning because the present work involves a Quest (continuous) x 2 (MS vs neutral) design, and the G*Power ANCOVA model is able to calculate sample sizes needed to detect interactions between a continuous “covariate” (quest) and a categorical variable (MS vs. neutral).

³ In this and the other present studies, we rather unsystematically used personal need for structure measure, the experiences in close relationships measure, and the Rosenberg self-esteem measure as filler items at the beginning of the studies. We are aware, of course, that other research has found such measures are implicated in terror management effects. However, the present research studies are not concerned with these variables; they were included merely as filler items and are beyond the scope of the present hypotheses focused on quest; thus, for the sake of brevity, they are not directly analyzed in the present paper. However, we have made the data for each of the present studies open and permanently available (https://osf.io/7g3be/?view_only=273fccbecd46453192ddbe42590c9b4b) so that interested researchers may further examine those variables for future research, as appropriate.

⁴ This supplemental study used a Quest x 2 (MS vs. control) design and asked Christian participants to rate their (1) general religiosity, (2) general faith in a higher power, (3) belief in God/Jesus, (4) belief in Allah/Mohammed, and (5) belief in the Hindu Trimurti (Brahma/Shiva/Vishnu). Participants rated each in terms of faith/belief, and then immediately again in terms of their certainty. The study found significant effects of quest but largely failed to detect any main effects of MS or Quest x MS interactions. However, the dependent variable was not previously validated and peer-reviewers identified methodological flaws in the DV measurement strategy (e.g., participants may have been confused about whether to report faith or certainty, and/or what it would mean to simultaneously self-report strong faith and strong uncertainty on the same item contents). Thus, it is not clear whether the null results of this study reflected a failed theory/hypothesis or a failed methodology. Nevertheless, for the sake of transparency, we report the initial theory/hypotheses, method, and results for this study in the online supplement. We also adjusted our research strategy back to using previously validated measures of religious attitudes and beliefs (belief in God as causal agent; attachment to God) in Studies 5 and 6.

⁵ We do not have any preconceived ideas about how these passages might be related to quest, but interested readers/researchers are of course welcome to consult the supplemental materials where the specific items and data are available for analysis.