Long live A(me)rica! An examination of the interplay between nationalistic-symbolic immortality striving and belief in life after death.

Abstract

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that the awareness of our eventual death is at odds with our evolved desire to live and that humans attempt to resolve this psychological conflict by investing in cultural worldviews that grant symbolic or literal immortality. The present studies examine the interplay between symbolic and literal immortality striving. Three studies show that, following a death reminder, only individuals who did not have a route to literal immortality (belief in an afterlife) increased how long they believe their culture (Canada in Studies 1 and 2, the United States in Study 3), will last by thousands of years. Study 4 demonstrated that this moderation effect cannot be explained by general religiosity; Study 5 conceptually replicated this finding using a different measure of perceived cultural longevity. Finally, Study 6 demonstrates that for those who were highly invested in their nation but did not believe in an afterlife, perceived cultural longevity was associated with decreased death anxiety. These results are consistent with the notion that people possess a primary path to immortality that follows directly from their worldview. The need for increased specificity in study design in TMT and the threat and defense literature more broadly is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).