Mortality Salience: How Death Makes Life Better

Mortality Salience: How Death Makes Life Better

Awareness of death, or “mortality salience,” has been shown in not a few instances to increase one’s sense of the value and fleeting quality of life. Not always, of course; for some, thinking about death leads us value our lives more but for others, the opposite is true.

Deathcare workers have been dealing with life’s ephemeral nature closely for longer than most; as a result, the knowledge is likely imprinted in the bones of those with the most experience. But for parts of the civilian population, it’s new territory, and science is taking an interest in how a relatively recently widespread sense of mortal reality is affecting society overall.

Know your own death

The psychological term refers to the awareness that one’s own death is on its way, a sense that the end is coming – for us, for our loved ones, and for everyone else. While the subject may not be a universally comfortable one to consider, it’s been shown that contemplating one’s own death can be valuable food for thought because it makes you weigh things a little differently, granting more value.

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Pondering our limited time on earth increases a sense of the importance of our own physical health and lifetime goals, for example. It can create tendencies toward adhering to one’s own sense of morality, and so amp up your own conscience, in a way; it may even help in the formation of a moral sense, a strengthening of beliefs.

Mortality salience has also been shown to inspire a desire to treat others more fairly, to orient one more strongly toward open-mindedness and growth. It may even engender religious thoughts, influencing philosophical perceptions and contributing to the development of a belief paradigm.

Understanding human nature

Thinking about your own death can be intimidating at first, especially for those for whom it is hardest to face, so historically the subject’s taboo nature has kept it out of the spotlight, but the recent uptick in the phenomenon of thinking on the temporary nature of life with the death positive movement and all that entails has made the issue mainstream.

What the study of our familiarity with our own coming death shows is that people’s willingness to consider their own endings leads to a greater cultural awareness. Aside from effects that resonate with the human tendency to seek meaning, a healthy sense of the temporary nature of our own lives can have profound, immediate effects on our decisions and behavior. Sometimes consequences of thinking on humanity’s ephemeral nature leads to less beneficial, more destructive ends. 

Studies show socially positive effects overall, though; those with a sense of life’s fleeting nature are on the whole more charitable, more likely to contribute to greater community well-being, and more likely to contribute in positive ways to the strengthening of relationships of all kinds.

On the other hand

There’s always a flip side, so the opposite effect also obtains: sometimes the outcome of considerations of the ultimate temporary nature of it all brings with it a nihilism leading to recklessness and undervaluation of life. When this is the case, the results can be increased intolerance to other worldviews and aggressive adherence to one’s own ideology.

Intensification of attachments to religious beliefs and views, which can be a source of security and comfort, may at the same time decrease acceptance of alternative perspectives. Other damaging consequences on social dynamics may include an increased potential for conflict.