Awareness and Athanasia: Evidence for an immortality hypothesis

• Author / Creator

  Andy Scott

• Terror management theory proposes that the awareness of death conflicts with our desperate desire to live and that humans have attempted to resolve the problem of death by inventing and sustaining cultural worldviews that provide hope for literal or symbolic immortality. The present studies focus on deathlessness derived from symbolically infusing the self into the greater whole of a cultural worldview that promises to outlast the individual’s finite existence. The goal of the current research was to test an immortality hypothesis – if cultural worldviews are existentially useful because they provide avenues to symbolic immortality, then people should be motivated to believe these psychological constructs will continue to exist into the distant future. Study 1 used a novel measure of cultural longevity estimates to demonstrate that participants who were strongly invested in Canadian culture believed their nation would continue to exist longer after a death reminder (vs. control). Study 2 extended these findings and showed that highly identified Americans made greater cultural longevity estimates for the USA following a death reminder but only if they had low beliefs in literal immortality. Study 2 thus demonstrated that only those who do not have a route to literal immortality increased their longevity estimates for a worldview that provided symbolic immortality. Lastly, I discuss the theoretical implications and the potential future utility of the findings and paradigm.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • terror management theory, immortality, death

• Graduation date

  Spring 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-7bxb-tg92

• License

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