A person’s level of self-alienation, or feeling disconnected from oneself, plays a pivotal role in the relationship between perceived meaning in life and death anxiety, according to new research published in theJournal of Personality. The findings suggest that merely recognizing a purpose in life may not be enough to shield us from existential dread. For decades, psychologists have been curious about how humans grapple with the concept of death. The idea that we will all eventually cease to exist can be profoundly unsettling. This fear of death, known as death anxiety, has long captured the in...
