217
Views
2
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

Is There Such a Thing as “Ultimate” Meaning? A Review of Fluid versus Fixed Models of Different Forms of Human Striving

&

References

  • Allport, G. W. (1943). The ego in contemporary psychology. Psychological Review, 50, 451–578.
  • Armeli, S., Gunthert, K. C., & Cohen, L. H. (2001). Stressor appraisals, coping, and post-event outcomes: The dimensionality and antecedents of stress-related growth. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 20(3), 366–395.
  • Baltes, P. B., & Baltes, M. M. (1993). Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences (Vol. 4). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  • Blackhart, G. C., Nelson, B. C., Knowles, M. L., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). Rejection elicits emotional reactions but neither causes immediate distress nor lowers self-esteem: A meta-analytic review of 192 studies on social exclusion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(4), 269–309.
  • Boucher, H. C., Bloch, T., & Pelletier, A. (2016). Fluid compensation following threats to self- concept clarity. Self and Identity, 15(2), 152–172. doi:10.1080/15298868.2015.1094405
  • Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Volume 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. (Original work published 1969)
  • Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. New York, NY: Cambridge University.
  • Creswell, J. D., Lam, S., Stanton, A. L., Taylor, S. E., Bower, J. E., & Sherman, D. K. (2007). Does self-affirmation, cognitive processing, or discovery of meaning explain cancer-related health benefits of expressive writing? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(2), 238–250. doi:10.1177/0146167206294412
  • Dechesne, M., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Ransom, S., Sheldon, K. M., van Knippenberg, A., & Janssen, J. (2003). Literal and symbolic immortality: The effect of evidence of literal immortality on self-esteem striving in response to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 722–737. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.722
  • Denissen, J. J., Penke, L., Schmitt, D. P., & Van Aken, M. A. (2008). Self-esteem reactions to social interactions: Evidence for sociometer mechanisms across days, people, and nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 181–196.
  • Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  • Gaucher, D., Hafer, C. L., Kay, A. C., & Davidenko, N. (2010). Compensatory rationalizations and the resolution of everyday undeserved outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(1), 109–118.
  • George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2016). Meaning in life as comprehension, purpose, and mattering: Toward integration and new research questions. Review of General Psychology, 20(3), 205–220.
  • Goldenberg, J. L., Pyszczynski, T., McCoy, S. K., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). Death, sex, love, and neuroticism: Why is sex such a problem? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1173.
  • Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Arndt, J. (2008). A basic but uniquely human motivation: Terror management. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp. 114–134). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  • Hart, J. (2014). Toward an integrative theory of psychological defense. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(1), 19–39. doi:10.1177/1745691613506018
  • 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(6), 999–1013.
  • Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), 88–110.
  • Hennes, E. P., Nam, H. H., Stern, C., & Jost, J. T. (2012). Not all ideologies are created equal: Epistemic, existential, and relational needs predict system-justifying attitudes. Social Cognition, 30(6), 669–688.
  • Jonas, E., McGregor, I., Klackl, J., Agroskin, D., Fritsche, I., Holbrook, C., & Quirin, M. (2014). Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 219–286. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-800052-6.00004-4
  • Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system‐justification and the production of false consciousness. British journal of social psychology, 33(1), 1–27.
  • Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current directions in psychological science, 14(5), 260–265.
  • Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (2013). Belief in a just God (and a just society): A system justification perspective on religious ideology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34(1), 56.
  • Juhl, J., & Routledge, C. (2016). Putting the terror in terror management theory evidence that the awareness of death does cause anxiety and undermine psychological well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(2), 99–103. doi:10.1177/0963721415625218
  • Juhl, J., Routledge, C., Arndt, J., Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2010). Fighting the future with the past: Nostalgia buffers existential threat. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(3), 309–314.
  • Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18–35.
  • Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., Chua, S. N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). For God (or) country: the hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control. Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(5), 725.
  • Knight, C. G., Tobin, S. J., & Hornsey, M. J. (2014). From fighting the system to embracing it: Control loss promotes system justification among those high in psychological reactance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 54, 139–146. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2014.04.012
  • Laurin, K., Kay, A. C., & Moscovitch, D. A. (2008). On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(6), 1559–1562.
  • Leary, M. R. (2004). The function of self-esteem in terror management theory and sociometer theory: Comment on Pyszczynski et al. (2004). Psychological Bulletin, 130, 478–482.
  • Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 1–62. doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(00)80003-9
  • Leotti, L. A., Iyengar, S. S., & Ochsner, K. N. (2010). Born to choose: The origins and value of the need for control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), 457–463.
  • Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world. In The Belief in a just World (pp. 9–30). Springer US.
  • Lo, W., & Yeh, K. (2014). The defensive reactions and automatic emotion regulation of defensive high self-esteems under threaten situation. Chinese Journal of Psychology, 56(1), 117–134.
  • Lykins, E. L., Segerstrom, S. C., Averill, A. J., Evans, D. R., & Kemeny, M. E. (2007). Goal shifts following reminders of mortality: Reconciling posttraumatic growth and terror management theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1088–1099. doi:10.1177/0146167207303015
  • Ma-Kellams, C., & Blascovich, J. (2011). Culturally divergent responses to mortality salience. Psychological Science, 22(8), 1019–1024. doi:10.1177/0956797611413935
  • Ma-Kellams, C., & Blascovich, J. (2012). Enjoying life in the face of death: East–West differences in responses to mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(5), 773–786.
  • McGregor, I., Zanna, M. P., Holmes, J. G., & Spencer, S. J. (2001). Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 472–488.
  • McGregor, I., Nash, K. A., & Inzlicht, M. (2009). Threat, high self-esteem, and reactive approach-motivation: Electroencephalographic evidence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 1003–1007.
  • McGregor, I., Nash, K., Mann, N., & Phills, C. E. (2010). Anxious uncertainty and reactive approach motivation (RAM). Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(1), 133.
  • Morris, K. L., Cooper, D. P., Goldenberg, J. L., Arndt, J., & Gibbons, F. X. (2014). Improving the efficacy of appearance-based sun exposure interventions with the terror management health model. Psychology & Health, 29(11), 1245–1264. doi:10.1080/08870446.2014.922184
  • Nash, K., Inzlicht, M., & McGregor, I. (2012). Approach-related left prefrontal EEG asymmetry predicts muted error-related negativity. Biological psychology, 91(1), 96–102.
  • Neuringer, C. (1974). Attitudes toward self in suicidal individuals. Life-Threatening Behavior, 4, 96–106.
  • Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174–187. doi:10.1177/0146167205280251
  • Owuamalam, C. K., Rubin, M., & Spears, R. (2016). The system justification conundrum: Re-examining the cognitive dissonance basis for system justification. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1889.
  • Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: an integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological bulletin, 136(2), 257.
  • Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997). Meaning in the context of stress and coping. Review of general psychology, 1(2), 115.
  • Pauketat, J. V., Moons, W. G., Chen, J. M., Mackie, D. M., & Sherman, D. K. (2016). Self-affirmation and affective forecasting: Affirmation reduces the anticipated impact of negative events. Motivation and Emotion, 40, 750–759.
  • Perach, R., & Wisman, A. (2016). Can creativity beat death? A review and evidence on the existential anxiety buffering functions of creative achievement. The Journal of Creative Behavior. Advance online publication.
  • Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2006). Death and black diamonds: Meaning, mortality, and the meaning maintenance model. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 309–318.
  • Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2010). The frog in Kierkegaard’s Beer: Finding meaning in the threat-compensation literature. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(10), 889–905. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00304.x
  • Proulx, T., Inzlicht, M., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(5), 285–291. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.04.002
  • Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1997). Why do we need what we need? A terror management perspective on the roots of human social motivation. Psychological Inquiry, 8(1), 1–20. doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0801_1
  • Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 435–468.
  • Quirin, M., Loktyushin, A., Arndt, J., Kustermann, E., Lo, Y. Y., Kuhl, J., et al. (2012). Existential neuroscience: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of neu- ral responses to reminders of one’s mortality. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 7(2), 193–198.
  • Randles, D., Inzlicht, M., Proulx, T., Tullett, A. M., & Heine, S. J. (2015). Is dissonance reduction a special case of fluid compensation? Evidence that dissonant cognitions cause compensatory affirmation and abstraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(5), 697–710.
  • 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(5), 848–854.
  • Rudman, L. A., Dohn, M. C., & Fairchild, K. (2007). Implicit self-esteem compensation: Automatic threat defense. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(5), 798–813.
  • Rutjens, B. T., Van Der Pligt, J., & Van Harreveld, F. (2010). Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1078–1080. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.009
  • Rutjens, B. T., van Harreveld, F., & van der Pligt, J. (2010). Yes we can belief in progress as compensatory control. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(3), 246–252. doi:10.1177/1948550610361782
  • Sarial-Abi, G., Vohs, K. D., Hamilton, R., & Ulqinaku, A. (2016). Stitching time: Vintage consumption connects the past, present, and future. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 27, 182–194.doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2016.06.004
  • Sears, S. R., Stanton, A. L., & Danoff-Burg, S. (2003). The Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City: Benefit finding, positive reappraisal coping and posttraumatic growth in women with early-stage breast cancer. Health Psychology, 22, 487–497.
  • Shepherd, S., Kay, A. C., Landau, M. J., & Keefer, L. A. (2011). Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense: Distinguishing compensatory control from uncertainty management and terror management processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(5), 949–958. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.026
  • Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 183–242.
  • Sobol, K., & Darke, P. R. (2014). “I’d like to be that attractive, but at least I’m smart”: How exposure to ideal advertising models motivates improved decision-making. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(4), 533–540. doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2014.03.005
  • Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (1991). A terror management theory of social behavior: The psychological functions of self-esteem and cultural worldviews. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 93–159. doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60328-7
  • Stavrova, O., Ehlebracht, D., & Fetchenhauer, D. (2016). Belief in scientific–technological progress and life satisfaction: The role of personal control. Personality and Individual Differences, 96, 227–236. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.013
  • Steele, C. M., & Liu, T. J. (1983). Dissonance processes as self-affirmation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(1), 5–19.
  • Steele, C. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in experimental social psychology, 21, 261–302.
  • Stone, J., Wiegand, A. W., Cooper, J., & Aronson, E. (1997). When exemplification fails: hypocrisy and the motive for self-integrity. Journal of personality and social psychology, 72(1), 54.
  • Swann, W. B. (1987). Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet. Journal of personality and social psychology, 53(6), 1038–1051.
  • Swann, W. B., Jr. (1990). To be adored or to be known? The interplay of self-enhancement and self-verification. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (Vol. 2, pp. 408–480). New York, NY: Guilford.
  • Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The social psychology of intergroup relations, 33(47), 74.
  • Tesser, A. (2000). On the confluence of self-esteem maintenance mechanisms. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(4), 290–299. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0404_1
  • Trafimow, D., & Rice, S. (2009). What if social scientists had reviewed great scientific works of the past? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(1), 65–78. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01107.x
  • Tritt, S. M., Inzlicht, M., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). Toward a biological understanding of mortality salience (and other threat compensation processes). Social Cognition, 30(6), 715–733.
  • Tullett, A., Prentice, M. S., Teper, R., Nash, K. A., Inzlicht, M., & McGregor, I. (2013). Neural and motivational mechanics of meaning and threat. In T. Proulx & M. Lindberg (Eds.), The psychology of meaning (pp. 401–419). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Webber, D., Zhang, R., Schimel, J., & Blatter, J. (2015). Finding death in meaninglessness: Evidence that death-thought accessibility increases in response to meaning threats. British Journal of Social Psychology, 55, 144–161. doi:10.1111/bjso.12118
  • Whitson, J. A., Galinsky, A. D., & Kay, A. (2015). The emotional roots of conspiratorial perceptions, system justification, and belief in the paranormal. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 56, 89–95. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2014.09.002

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.