Vess Matthew, Routledge Clay, Landau Mark J, Arndt Jamie
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2009 Oct;97(4):728-44. doi: 10.1037/a0016417.
Do reminders of mortality increase or decrease perceptions of life's meaning? The authors propose that death-relevant thought has divergent effects on meaning perceptions depending on individuals' personal need for structure (PNS) or dispositional desire for structured knowledge. In prior research, high-PNS individuals primed with mortality-related stimuli were found to employ clearly structured conceptions of reality. Consequently, these individuals were expected to show stable or even bolstered perceptions of meaning when death thought was heightened. Low-PNS individuals did not show this tendency and were therefore expected to show decreased meaning under heightened death-thought activation. The results of Studies 1a-1d supported these hypotheses. Studies 2 and 3 sought to identify how low-PNS individuals might reaffirm meaning and found that death thought increased their willingness to explore novelty. Studies 4 and 5 directly tested the meaning-conferring function of novelty seeking among low-PNS individuals, showing that the consideration of novel interpretations of the world and their experiences affirmed a sense of meaning in life following reminders of death. Discussion focuses on the relationship between meaning and death and the unique ways low-PNS individuals respond to mortality concerns.
对死亡的提醒会增加还是减少对生命意义的感知？作者提出，与死亡相关的想法对意义感知有不同影响，这取决于个体对结构的个人需求（PNS）或对结构化知识的倾向性渴望。在先前的研究中，发现用与死亡相关的刺激进行启动的高PNS个体采用清晰结构化的现实概念。因此，当死亡想法增强时，预计这些个体对意义的感知会保持稳定甚至增强。低PNS个体没有表现出这种倾向，因此预计在死亡想法激活增强时，他们对意义的感知会下降。研究1a - 1d的结果支持了这些假设。研究2和3试图确定低PNS个体如何重新确认意义，并发现死亡想法增加了他们探索新奇事物的意愿。研究4和5直接测试了低PNS个体中寻求新奇的意义赋予功能，表明对世界及其经历的新颖解释的思考在死亡提醒后确认了一种生活意义感。讨论集中在意义与死亡之间的关系以及低PNS个体应对死亡担忧的独特方式。
