Abstract
How would religion and a life event carrying an existential threat (LEET) jointly impact a person's life goals of becoming wealthy and successful in one's career? Goal reprioritisation, socioemotional selectivity, and gerotranscendence theories predict a shift away from material goals following a LEET, independent of the effect of religion. However, terror management theory (TMT) predicts that the effect of death thoughts depends on one's prevailing cultural values. As religion can be regarded as a culture, it is possible that Christians' and non-believers' material life goals would be differentially altered by LEET. Data from 1259 young Chinese adults reveal no main effect of LEET, but a strong effect of religion. Moreover, there was an interaction effect between LEET and religion on material life goals: LEET weakened material goals for Christians but not for non-believers. These findings suggest that TMT is more suitable than the other theories for predicting life goal changes. Copyright © 2012 Taylor & Francis.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 52-61 |
| Journal | Mental Health, Religion and Culture |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | Nov 2012 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2014 |
Keywords
- Chinese
- Existential threat
- Life event
- Life goal
- Materialism
- Religion
- Terror management theory
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