Being Mindful of the Certainty of Death: Intolerance to Uncertainty as a Mediator between Mindfulness and Fear of Death

Friedrich, Felix (2024) Being Mindful of the Certainty of Death: Intolerance to Uncertainty as a Mediator between Mindfulness and Fear of Death. Master thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

The confrontation of death forms an integral part of Buddhist practice, which is intended to reduce fear of death. Although mindfulness-based interventions have received a lot of attention in recent years, how mindfulness relates to death anxiety remains underexplored. According to terror-management theory, individuals defend against the certainty of death by adopting (cultural) beliefs and attitudes and/or distracting themselves. Both defenses are ways of relating to the certainty that death will occur as well as the uncertainty when it occurs. Hence, a mechanism through which mindfulness might reduce death anxiety is intolerance to uncertainty, which has been found to be a mediator between mindfulness and anxiety before. The present study investigated (i) whether a brief mindfulness intervention reduces death anxiety and (ii) whether this inverse relation is mediated by intolerance to uncertainty. Participants (N = 116) completed mindfulness or audiobook control exercises for 12 consecutive days. Mindfulness, death anxiety, and intolerance to uncertainty were measured pre- and post-intervention. The results showed a significant effect of the intervention on death anxiety. The mediation hypothesis could only be confirmed in exploratory analyses, as the control group surprisingly also exhibited significant reductions in intolerance to uncertainty, which rendered the simple mediation model insignificant. The findings add to the just emerging body of literature on mindfulness and fear of death. The results are integrated in the broader context of (philosophical) issues surrounding fear of death.

Item Type:	Thesis (Master)
Supervisor name:	Ostafin, B.D.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Clinical Psychology (CP) [Master Psychology]
Date Deposited:	08 Oct 2024 11:30
Last Modified:	08 Oct 2024 11:30
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4407

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