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Making Sense of Life: The Existential Self Trying to Deal with Personal Uncertainty

Making Sense of Life: The Existential Self Trying to Deal with Personal Uncertainty This article is about how people make sense of life and focuses on one core threat that may play a pivotal role in people's lives as existential meaning makers: personal uncertainty. Personal uncertainty is defined as the aversive feeling that you experience when you feel uncertain about yourself. Drawing on an uncertainty management perspective, it is hypothesized that cultural worldviews may provide a means to cope with personal uncertainty and that this may explain why under conditions of personal uncertainty people may respond especially positively to events that bolster their cultural norms and values and particularly negatively to persons and events that violate these norms and values. Findings are reviewed that support the uncertainty management model's predictions. Furthermore, the uncertainty management model may explain why terror management theory is not always about terror, but (at least partly) about personal uncertainty. Finally, conceptual implications, conflicting findings, and loose ends are noted, and testable hypotheses are formulated, which may further insight into the psychological processes pertaining to sense-making, worldview defense, and self-regulation. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Psychological Inquiry Taylor & Francis

Making Sense of Life: The Existential Self Trying to Deal with Personal Uncertainty

van den Bos, Kees
Psychological Inquiry , Volume 20 (4): 21 – Dec 11, 2009
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN
1532-7965
eISSN
1047-840X
DOI
10.1080/10478400903333411
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article is about how people make sense of life and focuses on one core threat that may play a pivotal role in people's lives as existential meaning makers: personal uncertainty. Personal uncertainty is defined as the aversive feeling that you experience when you feel uncertain about yourself. Drawing on an uncertainty management perspective, it is hypothesized that cultural worldviews may provide a means to cope with personal uncertainty and that this may explain why under conditions of personal uncertainty people may respond especially positively to events that bolster their cultural norms and values and particularly negatively to persons and events that violate these norms and values. Findings are reviewed that support the uncertainty management model's predictions. Furthermore, the uncertainty management model may explain why terror management theory is not always about terror, but (at least partly) about personal uncertainty. Finally, conceptual implications, conflicting findings, and loose ends are noted, and testable hypotheses are formulated, which may further insight into the psychological processes pertaining to sense-making, worldview defense, and self-regulation.

Journal

Psychological Inquiry – Taylor & Francis

Published: Dec 11, 2009

Keywords: uncertainty; terror management; worldview defense; existential sense-making; self-regulation

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