Living Authentically in the Face of Death: Predictors of Autonomous Motivation Among Individuals Exposed to Chronic Mortality Cues Compared to a Matched Community Sample

Abstract

Despite research demonstrating positive outcomes of conscious death reflection, very little research directly examines a core proposition of existential psychologists—that death reflection provides an opportunity for more authentic living. The current study compared individuals chronically exposed to genuine mortality cues (funeral/cemetery workers, n = 107) to a matched control sample ( n = 121) on autonomous motivation. It also assessed the moderating role of six constructs implicated in growth-oriented processing of death reflection: psychological flexibility, curiosity, neutral death acceptance, death anxiety, approach-oriented coping, and avoidant coping. Funeral/cemetery workers were significantly higher on autonomous motivation, and death-related work was found to have a more positive association with autonomous motivation for those higher on flexibility and lower on death anxiety. This has implications for both understanding which individuals are most likely to experience growth motivations when confronting death, and potential avenues for facilitating these motivations to enhance well-being.

Applying the terror management theory to active shooter events: Explaining the police response

“…Complementary research has shown that people with higher self-esteem function better in stressful occupations (e.g., Orth & Robins, 2014;Solomon et al, 1991b). Further, some evidence indicates that occupations in which workers are exposed to death (e.g., funeral/cemetery workers, doctors) or life-threatening situations (e.g., firefighters, police officers) may have a positive impact on workers, such as psychological flexibility (Arena et al, 2022), a loss of the fear of death (Arslantürk et al, 2021), increased levels of working safely (Yuan et al, 2018) and improved job performance (Perez-Floriano and Gonzalez, 2019). 5 Finally, improved active shooter training will require simulators and will need to be frequent to ingrain terror management mechanisms in each officer.…”