Making Sense of Life: The Existential Self Trying to Deal with Personal Uncertainty

2009/12/07 by Kees van den Bos · 4 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction #Social and Intergroup Psychology

paper · doi:10.1080/10478400903333411

openalex publication_date 2009/12/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

This article is about how people make sense of life and focuses on one core threat that may play a pivotal role in people's lives as existential meaning makers: personal uncertainty. Personal uncertainty is defined as the aversive feeling that you experience when you feel uncertain about yourself. Drawing on an uncertainty management perspective, it is hypothesized that cultural worldviews may provide a means to cope with personal uncertainty and that this may explain why under conditions of personal uncertainty people may respond especially positively to events that bolster their cultural norms and values and particularly negatively to persons and events that violate these norms and values. Findings are reviewed that support the uncertainty management model's predictions. Furthermore, the uncertainty management model may explain why terror management theory is not always about terror, but (at least partly) about personal uncertainty. Finally, conceptual implications, conflicting findings, and loose ends are noted, and testable hypotheses are formulated, which may further insight into the psychological processes pertaining to sense-making, worldview defense, and self-regulation.

Citations

• Immediate and delayed effects of causal uncertainty inductions on uncertainty accessibility
• Restoring the self: Positive affect helps improve self-regulation following ego depletion
• A Theory of Social Comparison Processes
• Advances In Experimental Social Psychology
• The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.
• Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales.
• Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values.

Cited by

• A Theory of Subjective Wellbeing
• What is your status portfolio? Higher status variance across groups increases interpersonal helping but decreases intrapersonal well-being
• The Relationship Between Uncertainty and Affect
• Daily Evaluation Threat and Instability in the Ability Self‐Concept Among Stereotype‐Aware Women

Related

• Introduction - Uncertainty and survivance: what remains after the crisis?
• Affective uncertainty
• Uncertainty, Fear and Action. A Critical Commentary on Patrik Aspers’ Book
• Uncertainty, Reduced. A Discussion of Patrik Aspers’ Book
• Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect.