CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL S CIENCE

Introducing Science to the

Psychology of the Soul
Experimental Existential Psychology
Sander L. Koole,1 Jeff Greenberg,2 and Tom Pyszczynski3
1
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 2University of Arizona; and 3University of Colorado-Colorado
Springs

ABSTRACT—Humans live out their lives knowing that their Many of the early influential figures in psychology, such as
own death is inevitable; that their most cherished beliefs Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener, Sigmund Freud, William
and values, and even their own identities, are uncertain; James, John Dewey, Otto Rank, and Gordon Allport, used an
that they face a bewildering array of choices; and that existential perspective in their work. However, with the growing
their private subjective experiences can never be shared emphasis on studying overt behavior over the course of the 20th
with another human being. This knowledge creates five century, the science of psychology shifted away from people’s
major existential concerns: death, isolation, identity, existential concerns, dismissing them as too vague and sub-
freedom, and meaning. The role of these concerns in hu- jective to be addressed by scientific methods. But no more: A
man affairs has traditionally been the purview of phil- new direction for psychological science has emerged, one that
osophy. However, recent methodological and conceptual considers the human confrontation with deep existential issues
advances have led to the emergence of an experimental to be an essential factor in diverse forms of human behavior and
existential psychology directed toward empirically inves- that uses rigorous experimental methods to explore these pro-
tigating the roles that these concerns play in psychological cesses. This discipline has become known as experimental ex-
functioning. This new domain of psychological science has istential psychology (XXP; Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszczynski,
revealed the pervasive influence of deep existential con- 2004).
cerns on diverse aspects of human thought and behavior.
THE EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
KEYWORDS—death; isolation; identity; freedom; meaning
The psychological confrontation with deep existential concerns
Humans possess far more sophisticated intellectual abilities occurs most dramatically in the aftermath of extreme negative
than other animals do, including a greatly enhanced capacity for events—whether personal ones, such as a devastating accident,
self-reflection. This capacity is highly adaptive because it ena- life-threatening illness, or untimely death of a loved one, or more
bles people to develop complex strategies for dealing with risks globally significant ones like the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In the
and opportunities in their environment. However, self-reflection absence of such extreme events, most people only occasionally
also leads people to realize that death is inevitable; that their consciously consider deep existential concerns, though some
most sacred beliefs and values, and even their own identities, are people consciously ponder these issues more than others. Yet
uncertain; that they face a bewildering array of choices in their existential philosophers have maintained that existential con-
lives; and that in many ways they are alone in an indifferent cerns exert a pervasive influence on human behavior regardless
universe. Existential psychology seeks to understand how peo- of whether people realize it or not.
ple somehow come to terms with these basic facts of life and how As long as existential concerns could only be observed
these issues affect diverse aspects of their behavior and ex- through introspection, it was impossible to determine what im-
perience (Yalom, 1980). pact they had on behavior. Fortunately, recent advances in ex-
perimental psychology have furnished the necessary tools to
analyze unconscious sources of human behavior, and experi-
Address correspondence to Sander Koole, Department of Social
Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, van der Boechorststraat mental existential psychologists have been applying these tools
1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected]. to explore how people respond to reminders of these daunting

212 Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science Volume 15—Number 5

 Sander L. Koole, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski

facts of life. One of the most important tools has been the priming THE BIG FIVE EXISTENTIAL CONCERNS
method, in which the effect of exposure to stimuli (primes) on
people’s behavior is observed. Subtle priming events such as Since the 1980s, hundreds of experiments have examined peo-
completing a word puzzle or seeing a picture can influence ple’s psychological reactions to the confrontation with deep
people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, even when they are existential concerns. This first generation of experimental ex-
unaware of any such influence. For instance, after completing a istential research has highlighted five major existential con-
puzzle with achievement-related words, people display more cerns, summarized in Table 1. These ‘‘big five’’ concerns
achievement motivation and judge other people’s behavior as represent some of the most profound and universal existential
more achievement oriented (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, conflicts that people must face, and echo the works of diverse
Barndollar, & Troetschel, 2001). Other useful experimental philosophers and artists across the ages.
techniques include measures that can indirectly assess The problem of death has been one of the most widely studied
people’s attitudes or beliefs, for instance via response times. issues in XXP. Most of this research has used the mortality
Because implicit measures do not rely on introspection, they can salience paradigm (Pyszczynski et al., 2003), in which some
probe the unconscious processes that affect people’s judgments participants are reminded of their own mortality. This is ac-
and behavior. complished in a variety of ways, but the most common method is
The existential concerns that are activated by experimental to ask participants to respond to two brief prompts about their
techniques are generally of low emotional intensity. This own death (e.g., ‘‘Please describe the emotions the thought of
suggests that the results of XXP may be relevant mostly for your own death arouses in you’’). Control groups receive parallel
understanding people’s normal functioning and everyday questions about a neutral topic (e.g., watching television) or,
struggles in the absence of an acute existential crisis—indeed, more commonly, an aversive topic that is unrelated to death (e.g.,
most work in this area is focused on such normal functioning. failing an exam, experiencing pain). Over 200 experiments have
Whether the psychological processes activated by powerful shown that heightened mortality salience leads people to engage
existential crises are qualitatively different from those involved a systematic set of terror management defenses, which help them
in people’s everyday existential struggles remains an open manage the potential for terror that the threat of death can
question. However, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Greenberg arouse.
(2003) observed that the reactions of the American public People’s initial, conscious reaction to mortality salience is to
to the highly traumatic terrorist attacks of 9/11 were quite deny their personal vulnerability to impending death (e.g., ‘‘I am
similar to the reactions to subtle experimental reminders of a healthy person, death is far off’’) and to suppress further death-
death found in many laboratory studies over the decade prior to related thoughts (Pyszczynski et al., 2003). However, once death
the attacks. Thus, although the intensity of people’s existential concerns are no longer in focal attention, people exhibit an in-
concerns is likely to be lower in the laboratory than during ex- crease in the accessibility of death-related thought. For ex-
treme life events, the underlying psychological processes may ample, they become quicker to recognize death-related words
be similar. on a computer screen and are more likely to complete word

TABLE 1
The ‘‘Big Five’’ Existential Concerns, the Existential Problems They Represent, and Experimental Paradigms for Studying Them

Concern Existential problem Illustrative paradigms

Death Awareness of inevitability of death vs. desire for continued Mortality salience (Pyszczynski et al., 2003)
existence
Isolation Need to feel connected to others vs. experiences of rejection Ostracism (Eisenberger et al., 2000); I-sharing
and the realization that one’s subjective experience of reality (Pinel et al., 2006)
can never be fully shared
Identity A clear sense of who one is and how one fits into the world vs. Self-discrimination (Kuhl & Kazén, 1994);
uncertainties because of conflicts between self-aspects, identity consolidation (McGregor, in press)
unclear boundaries between self and non-self, or limited self-
insight
Freedom Experience of free will vs. external forces on behavior and the Intrinsic vs. extrinsic reward (Ryan & Deci,
burden of responsibility for one’s choices in response to a 2000); choice (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000)
complex array of alternatives
Meaning Desire to believe life is meaningful vs. events and experiences Coherence formation (Baumann & Kuhl, 2002);
that appear random or inconsistent with one’s bases of threats to meaning (Davis & McKearney, 2003)
meaning

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fragments with death-related words (e.g., ‘‘coffin’’ for coff _ _). activities that are either assigned or self-chosen. Identity con-
This heightened death-thought accessibility then triggers terror fusion is indicated when, later on, participants misremember
management defenses, which seem logically unrelated to the assigned activities as self-chosen. Such false memories are in-
problem of death but bolster people’s faith in their cultural deed more prevalent among individuals who experience high
worldviews and personal self-worth. For instance, mortality sa- levels of identity confusion in their everyday lives (i.e., chronic
lience causes American participants to react more negatively ruminators, Kuhl & Kazén, 1994). Apparently, one important
towards individuals who criticize the USA and more positively aspect of identity construction consists of differentiating one’s
towards individuals who praise the USA. It also leads to in- own inner self from external influences (cf. Ryan & Deci, 2000).
creased strivings for self-esteem, such as greater efforts to en- To alleviate the threat to identity posed by undesirable or
hance one’s physical attractiveness and display one’s physical inconsistent information about the self, people use a wide variety
strength. of tactics, including distorting their perceptions of self and af-
These terror management defenses have been observed in firming or exaggerating unrelated but valued aspects of self. For
many countries (e.g., Australia, Germany, Iran, Israel, Japan, example, McGregor (in press) has demonstrated that people
The Netherlands, and the United States); and they influence a respond to uncertainties in their identities by becoming more
broad range of social behaviors and attitudes regarding nation- zealous in their attitudes and exhibiting greater certainty in their
alism, prejudice, stereotyping, aggression, aesthetic and polit- self-concepts, as exhibited by faster response latencies to
ical preferences, social justice, sex and other bodily activities, me/not-me decisions. Such self-affirmations can even insulate
and interpersonal relations (Pysczynski et al., 2003). Such people from stress, as indicated by lower levels of stress hor-
symbolic defenses strengthen people’s view of themselves as mones (cortisol) after performing a stressful task (Creswell et al.,
valuable contributors to a meaningful world rather than as mere 2005).
animals, and thereby enable them to avert the potential for A fourth major existential concern is freedom. A large body of
anxiety that results from their awareness of the inevitability of research inspired by reactance theory (cf., Brehm & Brehm,
death. Indeed, mortality salience does not trigger symbolic terror 1980) has shown that threats to freedom create an aversive
management defenses if people have been convinced that there psychological state (reactance) that motivates people to restore
is scientific evidence of a literal afterlife. and reassert their freedom. Research on self-determination
Isolation from others is a second major existential concern. theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) has shown that the presence of ex-
Social exclusion experiences such as separation from loved ones ternal incentives to action undermines perceptions of choice and
or ostracism serve as potent reminders that one is fundamentally intrinsic motivation. Moreover, people who experience their
alone and separate from others. Indeed, recent experiments in- actions as freely willed report more fulfilling relationships and
dicate that social exclusion potentiates the same brain systems greater well-being than do those who experience their actions as
that mediate physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Wil- externally controlled. Freedom can also have negative conse-
liams, 2003). Even when friends and family are physically quences. Recent experiments have found that people are more
present, the unbridgeable gap between individuals’ subjective satisfied with their choices if they have a small rather than a large
worlds can lead people to feel existentially isolated. These number of options to choose from (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000).
feelings of isolation are temporarily relieved when people en- Unrestrained freedom may thus promote a sense of ground-
counter others who appear to share their subjective experiences, lessness and indeterminacy.
a phenomenon known as I-sharing (Pinel, Long, Landau, Alex- The problem of meaning arises from the first four existential
ander, & Pyszczynski, 2006). I-sharing can be experimentally concerns. In a world where the only real certainty is death, where
manipulated by having individuals share a subjective reaction one can never fully share one’s experiences with others, where
(e.g., giggling simultaneously). Consistent with the existential one’s identity is uncertain, and where one is prodded by external
function of I-sharing, people who are reminded of their exist- forces while facing a bewildering array of choices, what meaning
ential isolation are especially attracted to I-sharers. The desire does life have? Research has documented the ways in which
for shared subjective experiences thus leads people to feel a traumatic experiences threaten people’s sense of life’s meaning
deep existential connection with others who appear to share their (e.g., Janoff-Bulman & Yopyk, 2004). More importantly, this line
subjective experiences. of research has shown that those survivors of trauma who manage
A third major existential concern is personal identity. Al- to reconstruct a meaningful view of the world and of their own
though identity crises seem particularly common in adoles- lives often experience considerable personal growth and an
cence, people often struggle to integrate their diverse increased appreciation of life.
experiences to create and maintain a consistent sense of who Consistent with these correlational findings, both asking
they are and how they fit into the world throughout their life people to recall a trauma and challenging people’s basis for
spans. A sophisticated experimental paradigm that investigates viewing life as meaningful lead to a compensatory increase in
identity confusion is the self-discrimination task (Kuhl & Kazén, their reports that their lives are meaningful (Davis & McKear-
1994). In this task, participants have to perform a number of ney, 2003). Recent experiments also suggest that the creation of

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meaning is at least partly driven by unconscious processes. More forces that promote such fierce allegiance to these systems of
specifically, people can intuitively sense the presence of meaning and the readiness to annihilate those with different
meaningful relationships between stimuli, even when they perspectives. We are hopeful that XXP will bear even more fruit
cannot logically explain these relationships (Baumann & Kuhl, in the years to come, promoting greater authenticity and be-
2002). Although people often cannot articulate what makes their nevolence in human affairs.
lives meaningful, clearly—as portrayed by existential writers
such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, and Milan Kund-
era—maintaining a meaningful view of life is a central human Recommended Reading
concern. Becker, E. (1971). The birth and death of meaning. New York: Free
Press.
Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of self-determination
TOWARD A NEW SCIENCE OF THE SOUL research. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Greenberg, J., Koole, S.L., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). (See References)
The human struggle with the givens of existence has captured the Kuhl, J., & Beckmann, J. (1994). Volition and personality: Action versus
imagination of poets, prophets, and philosophers across the ages. state orientation. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe & Huber.
Experimental psychologists are now studying people’s existen- Williams, K.D. (2001). Ostracism: The power of silence. New York:
tial concerns using the rigorous methods of psychological sci- Guilford.
ence. The first generation of research in XXP has produced
incontrovertible evidence that the confrontation with existential
issues exerts a pervasive—albeit often unconscious—influence
on human behavior. One important challenge for the next gen- REFERENCES
eration of research is a further integration of existential psy-
chology and cognitive neuroscience. For instance, models of Bargh, J.A., Gollwitzer, P.M., Lee-Chai, A.Y., Barndollar, K., & Troet-
schel, R. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and
parallel-distributed processing may illuminate the basic
pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social
mechanisms that underlie the creation and maintenance of Psychology, 81, 1014–1027.
meaning. More generally, research may clarify the role of brain Baumann, N., & Kuhl, J. (2002). Intuition, affect and personality: Un-
regions associated with self-reflection and contemplation of the conscious coherence judgments and self-regulation of negative
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Brehm, S., & Brehm, J.W. (1980). Psychological reactance: A theory of
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freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.
Another challenge will be to apply the insights of XXP in
Creswell, J.D., Welch, W., Taylor, S.E., Sherman, D.K., Gruenewald, T.,
everyday life. Psychotherapists have long recognized the value & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuro-
of an existential perspective (Yalom, 1980). It could be useful to endocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Sci-
systematically assess the role of the big five concerns in different ence, 16, 846–851.
clinical disorders and the extent to which therapists with dif- Davis, C.G., & McKearney, J.M. (2003). How do people grow from their
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development of new, scientifically grounded forms of psycho-
Eisenberger, N.A., Lieberman, M.D., & Williams, K.D. (2003). Does
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lifespan and between individuals. This could be examined by Greenberg, J., Koole, S.L., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). Handbook of
assessing an individual’s defensiveness when each of the five experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford.
concerns is threatened, or by coding autobiographies people Iyengar, S.S., & Lepper, M.R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can
prepare, or books, movies, and music people value, for the one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 79, 995–1006.
presence of existential themes. The relative prominence of each
Janoff-Bulman, R., & Yopyk, D.J. (2004). Random outcomes and valued
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increased sense of freedom strengthen or weaken an individual’s Kuhl, J., & Kazén, M. (1994). Self-discrimination and memory: State
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The XXP perspective also has wide-ranging social implica-
McGregor, I., (in press). Offensive defensiveness: Toward an integrative
tions. At a time in history when clashes between cultures, neuroscience of compensatory zeal after mortality salience, per-
ideologies, religions, and national and ethnic groups threaten to sonal uncertainty, and other poignant self-threats. Psychological
plunge the planet into chaos, XXP illuminates the psychological Inquiry.

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Pinel, E.C., Long, A.E, Landau, M.J., Alexander, K., & Pyszczynski, T. Ryan, R.M., & Deci, E.L. (2000). Self-determination theory and
(2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 243–257. well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78.
Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington DC: American Psycho-
logical Association.

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