Research Focus

I have always been fascinated with "big-picture" questions about life and why people do what they do. More often than not, these questions led me to think about the role of mortality concerns in people’s life. For example, why do some people become anxious by the topic of death while others appear to handle the topic quite well? Relatedly, are there certain psychological resources that help people deal with anxiety and concerns about their own mortality? I began to investigate these types of questions empirically in graduate school. A study of mine centrally aimed at exploring these ideas was my master’s thesis titled Mortality Salience and the Effects of Autonomy on Death Anxiety. Building on previous research based on Terror Management Theory (Greenberg et al., 1986; 2014) and Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), my master’s thesis explored the previously untested prediction that although reminders of mortality can increase death-related anxiety, autonomy can prevent this effect.

To test this idea, participants in the study were first randomly assigned to either a control condition that prompted them to think about pain, or a mortality salience condition that prompted them to think about their own mortality. Then, participants were randomly assigned to either a condition that prompted them to think about external pressures and obligations, or a condition that prompted them to think about being autonomous and self-determined. Finally, participants responded to a measure assessing their death-related anxiety. Results from this study showed that people reminded of death (compared to those reminded of pain) reported greater death anxiety if they were prompted to think about external pressures and obligations, but not if they were prompted to think about being autonomous and self-determined. In other words, autonomy served as a buffer against existential concerns, preventing the reminder of mortality from increasing death anxiety.

My colleagues and I have been developing and publishing similar work further demonstrating that autonomy and self-determination can help mitigate death-related concerns (e.g., Vail et al., 2019). For example, although conditions that increase mortality salience typically motivate people to become defensive of their worldviews and intolerant of perceived others, we have shown that autonomous orientations can prevent this effect (e.g., Vail et al., 2020). One explanation for why autonomy helps people effectively manage death-related concerns is that it can support the feeling that some aspect of oneself will endure and/or be remembered after death, referred to as a sense of symbolic immortality. By feeling a sense of personal volition and self-authorship for one’s life, an individual can gain the sense that they are making a lasting impression that will be remembered by others, which in turn should help defend against death-related concerns. My research offers a framework for understanding this role of autonomy, and I have published both correlational and experimental work showing that autonomy supports a sense of symbolic immortality, which in turn supports well-being and people’s perceived meaning in life (Horner et al., 2021, 2022).

These findings have important implications for strategies aimed at supporting people’s well-being and helping them manage death-related anxiety and concerns. Death anxiety is being increasingly recognized as a transdiagnostic risk factor associated with various anxiety and depressive disorders (e.g., Iverach et al., 2014), and feelings of low self-worth and low meaning in life can make people vulnerable to experiencing heightened psychological distress (Juhl, 2019). My research continues to investigate how autonomy can support a sense of personal worth and meaning in life by bolstering existential resources, and many of my ongoing projects are aimed at further developing this work to help us better understand ways to support people’s well-being. For example, my ongoing work is aimed at identifying how a sense of autonomy support for gender expression (feeling supported by others in one’s personal control of and self-authorship for their gender identity and its expression) might help promote greater meaning in life and lower feelings of existential isolation among people who identify as transgender (e.g., Horner et al., 2023).