An Alternative Perspective on the Meaning of Death

That the scarcity of objects enhances their value is a widely known principle in the behavioral sciences. In addition, research has demonstrated that attaching high value to an object produces biased perceptions of its scarcity. Three studies applied this bidirectional link between scarcity andvalue to themeaningofdeath, testing the prediction that death represents the scarcity of life. In Study 1, reminders of death led to enhanced evaluations of life. In Studies 2 and 3, the monetary (Study 2) and psychological (Study 3) value of life were manipulated. In both studies, when human life was highly valuable, the concept of deathwasmoreaccessible, as predicted from the association between value and scarcity. Previous theoretical treatments of the meaning of death have shared the notion that death is essentially a threat requiring psychological defenses.Thepresent results suggest that, from an informational perspective, death represents the scarcity of life. Anecdotal accounts of individuals who have experienced brushes with death suggest that they often experience a renewed appreciation of life’s value (e.g., Zamora, 2006). Such experiences are readily explained by the scarcity heuristic, which dictates that commodities that are rare (or likely to be lost) are likely to be perceived as valuable. Life itself emerges with enhanced value after people confront its fragile and finite nature. Dai, Wertenbroch, and Brendl (2008) recently demonstrated that the link between scarcity and value is so overlearned that its converse also holds. In that study, participants who were given a large monetary reward for identifying a particular class of stimuli tended to underestimate its frequency. Not only are scarce objects likely to be valued, but when an object is highly valued, it is likely to be perceived as scarce, an effect Dai et al. termed the value heuristic. Underlying both the scarcity and the value heuristics is the strong cognitive link between scarcity and value. Both of these heuristics demonstrate that subjective estimates of a distal attribute of a stimulus (e.g., its value) can rely on available information about another attribute (e.g., its scarcity), and this substitution is based on the presumed covariation of these attributes (Kahneman & Fredrick, 2002). Thus, when information about scarcity is accessible, it might be used in evaluations of value. When information about value is accessible, it might be used in evaluations of scarcity. The bidirectional operation of these heuristics attests to the very strong presumed covariation of scarcity and value. Clearly, scarcity and value share a robust cognitive association. Applying this link to death and life, we propose that death (essentially the termination of life) serves as a reminder that life is a potentially losable commodity. As such, death represents the scarcity of life and should, therefore, share a strong relationship with life’s value. Such a conceptualization leads to two innovative predictions. First, just as the scarcity of any object renders that object more valuable, reminders of death (the scarcity of life) should render life more valuable. Second, just as attaching high value to an object automatically promotes the accessibility of the closely linked concept of its scarcity, promoting the value of life should make the concept of death more cognitively accessible. We now briefly contrast this conceptualization with other approaches to the meaning of death, highlighting the differing predictions that emerge from our approach. PERSPECTIVES ON THE MEANING OF DEATH Terror management theory (TMT; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991) posits that humans are uniquely aware of their ownmortality and asserts that a variety of social mechanisms (e.g., cultural worldviews) have evolved as defensive buffers against the terror inspired by this existential dilemma. Many studies have demonstrated that when individuals are reminded of their own mortality, they utilize these buffers unconsciously in a variety of ways (e.g., Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004). These defensive processes occur after a delay, when death is no longer in focal awareness. Immediately following mortality salience, individuals may instead engage in conscious ‘‘pseudoAddress correspondence to Laura A. King, Department of Psychological Sciences, 210 McAlester Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211, e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 20—Number 12 1459 Copyright r 2009 Association for Psychological Science by Mark Rafter on April 15, 2013 pss.sagepub.com Downloaded from rational efforts’’ to defend against death (e.g., consciously espousing conventional mores—Kosloff & Greenberg, 2009). It is to these immediate responses that the scarcity heuristic would clearly apply, suggesting that they are not in fact defensive, but follow from the association of scarcity with value. In contrast to TMT, the meaning-maintenance model (MMM; Heine, Proulx, &Vohs, 2006) views death as a threat to meaning; mortality-salience effects are encompassed under the rubric of meaning reinstatement. Contrary to the MMM, the scarcity heuristic suggests that reminders of death automatically enhance the value of life. To the extent that it represents the finite quality of life, the reality of death might well make life more meaningful (not less so). TMT and MMM share two assumptions: that death is, primarily, a threat and that responses to death are expressions of motivated, defensive processes. These assumptions have become an integral part of psychology’s understanding of the meaning of death, leading to an application of defensiveness as a general explanation for all responses to death (even enhanced implicit positive affect—see DeWall & Baumeister, 2007). In contrast, we suggest that death is not (only) a source of terror or meaninglessness and that at least some responses to death can be explained without resorting to motivated defenses. Because it represents life’s scarcity, death may be cognitively linked with life’s value. When death (or life’s scarcity) is salient, life is, simply, better. Further, when life is highly valued, its scarcity (death) may be rendered more cognitively accessible. Study 1 examined the prediction that reminders of the scarcity of life (i.e., death) would promote its value. Studies 2 and 3 examined the opposite prediction, which does not follow parsimoniously from either TMTor MMM, that enhancing life’s value would automatically increase the cognitive accessibility of death (i.e., life’s scarcity).