The impact of mortality awareness on meaning in life among Christians and atheists

ABSTRACT

Research derived from terror management theory suggests that reliance on a terror-managing set of beliefs when reminded of death can influence one’s perception of meaning in life. The present research builds on prior work suggesting that religious concepts help to manage the awareness of death, and expands on that work to explore the challenges of religious and atheistic terror management. It was hypothesized that religious participants would be able to sustain perceived meaning in life when reminded of death, but that atheists would be vulnerable to a reduction in meaning when reminded of death. To test that idea, Christians and atheists were first reminded of either mortality or a control topic, and then asked to rate how strongly they felt life was meaningful. Results indicated that ratings of meaning in life were lower in the mortality salience condition, relative to the control condition, among the atheists but not among the Christians. Implications regarding religious and non-religious terror management strategies are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Terror management
• mortality salience
• religion
• Christian
• atheism
• meaning
• purpose

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We also analyzed the data in two additional, alternative ways. The first analyzed the results with the other religious respondents (the Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist respondents) added with the Christians in a “religious” category. The second analyses the results with agnostics (n = 43) as a third category alongside the target samples of Christians and atheists.

In the first analysis, we added the Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist respondents to the Christians to form a “religious” category. A 2 (“religious” vs. atheist) × 2 (MS vs. pain) ANOVA, yielded a pattern of results similar to those found using the all-Christian category. There were again no main effects of either religious/philosophical identification or MS, though the predicted 2-way interaction emerged, F(1, 135) = 3.84,  = .03, p = .05. Among atheists, meaning in life was lower in the MS condition than in the pain condition (t[78] = −2.76, d = −.63, p < .01); in contrast, among the “religious” participants there was no statistical difference between meaning in life ratings reported in the MS and pain conditions (t[59] = .23, d = .06, p = .49). From another angle, when reminded of death, meaning in life was lower for atheists than for the “religious” (t[76] = −2.95, d = −.68, p < .01); in contrast, when reminded of pain there was no statistical difference between meaning in life ratings reported by atheists and the “religious” (t[58] = .04, d = .01, p = .96).

We also ran a second analysis with an added third category of agnostics (n = 43) alongside the target samples of Christians and atheists. A 3 (Christian vs agnostic vs. atheist) × 2 (MS vs. pain) ANOVA, again found no main effects of either religious/philosophical identification or MS, though the predicted 2-way interaction still emerged, F(2, 173) = 3.41,  = .04, p = .04. Among atheists, meaning in life was lower in the MS condition than in the pain condition (t[78] = −2.57, d = −.58, p = .01); among Christians there was no statistical difference between meaning in life ratings reported in the MS and pain conditions (t[56] = .64, d = .17, p = .52); and among agnostics there was no statistical difference between meaning in life ratings reported in the MS and pain conditions (t[42] = .84, d = .26, p = .40). From another angle, when reminded of death, meaning in life was lower for atheists than for Christians (t[76] = −2.44, d = −.56, p < .01) and marginally lower than agnostics (t[61] = −1.60, d = −.41, p = .11); in contrast, when reminded of pain there was no statistical difference between meaning in life ratings reported by atheists, agnostics, and Christians (|t|s < .96, |d|s < .30, ps > .34). MS had no effect among agnostics and Christians, but reduced meaning in life among atheists, which is consistent with predictions that this effect is unique to individuals who categorically reject supernatural concepts. However, we also note that the agnostic sample is underpowered, and caution against any firm conclusions based on these analyses.

2 We also tested the effect of the MS induction on fear, following Lambert et al.’s (2014) recommendation to combine the PANAS-X items afraid, scared, and frightened (α = .91) to produce an alternative subscale measure of fear. The present data showed that this alternative composition of the fear subscale was not influenced by MS compared to a pain condition (F[1, 132] = 1.42,  = .01, p = .24). Lambert et al. used a comparison against a neutral condition, whereas the present work used a comparison against a potential fear/anxiety prime (e.g., pain). The present work is therefore not a direct replication attempt, but the implication of the present findings is more important: the present work followed Lambert et al.’s method of scoring fear affect and did not find any effect of MS condition on fear beyond another fear/anxiety condition (i.e., pain), yet still demonstrated an MS effect on meaning in life—highlighting the unique psychological impact of MS against a control condition that is similarly fear-inducing. Thus, the observed results do not appear to be due to possible differential influences of MS on fear.

3 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.