Role of mindfulness meditation as moderating variable in reducing death anxiety

ABSTRACT

The widespread mortality caused by the second wave of COVID created a sense of death salience world over. Past literature suggests that reminder of one’s own mortality produces death anxiety in a person. The present study intends to see the effect of mindfulness meditation as a moderating variable on death anxiety. For this, the participants (n = 42; 25 male, 17 female) were randomly assigned to the control and the experimental groups. The experimental group practiced 20 minutes of mindfulness meditation while the control group received no such intervention. It has been found that there was a significant impact of mindfulness meditation on the experimental group in reducing death anxiety.

KEYWORDS:

• Terror management theory
• death anxiety
• mindfulness meditation
• COVID 19
• spirituality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gagan Jain

Gagan Jain is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. He obtained his PhD in Psychology from University of Rajasthan and participated in several national and international conferences. His areas of interest include the psychological effects of internet pornography, mindfulness, and spirituality.