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Awareness of death can make us more inclined to value life, say researchers [Image: DuBoix - Morguefile]

Thinking about death can help us live a better life

Natural Health News — Most of us like to avoid the topic, but new research suggests that thinking about death can actually be the key to a happy life.

An awareness of mortality can improve physical health and help us re-prioritise our goals and values, according to a new analysis of existing studies. Even non-conscious thinking about death – say walking by a cemetery – could prompt positive changes and promote helping others.

Abandoning old thinking

In the past, says Kenneth Vail of the University of Missouri, lead author of the new study, psychological theory has leaned towards the idea that thinking about death can be destructive and dangerous, fuelling everything from prejudice and greed to violence. These beliefs arise from what is known as terror management theory (TMT), which suggests that we uphold certain cultural beliefs to manage our feelings of mortality, have rarely explored the potential benefits of death awareness.

“This tendency for TMT research to primarily deal with negative attitudes and harmful behaviours has become so deeply entrenched in our field that some have recently suggested that death awareness is simply a bleak force of social destruction.”  

“There has been very little integrative understanding of how subtle, day-to-day, death awareness might be capable of motivating attitudes and behaviours that can minimise harm to oneself and others, and can promote well-being.”

Tolerance, empathy and compassion

In constructing a new model for how we think about our own mortality, Vail and colleagues performed an extensive review of recent studies on the topic. They found numerous examples of experiments both in the lab and field that suggest a positive side to natural reminders about mortality.

One in 2008 that tested how just being physically near a cemetery affects how willing people are to help a stranger.

The researchers observed people who were either passing through a cemetery or were one block away, out of sight of the cemetery. The number of people willing to help  a stranger, they say, was 40% greater at the cemetery than a block away from the cemetery,suggesting that “the awareness of death can motivate increased expressions of tolerance, egalitarianism, compassion, empathy, and pacifism.”

In another 2010 study reviewed, death awareness motivated sustainable pro-environmental behaviours and a 2009 study showed how an increased awareness of death can motivate American and Iranian religious fundamentalists to display peaceful compassion toward members of other groups.

Better for physical health too

Thinking about death can also promote better health. Recent studies have shown that when reminded of death people may opt for better health choices, such as using more sunscreen, smoking less, or increasing levels of exercise.

A 2011 study, they note, found that death reminders increased intentions to perform breast self-exams when women were exposed to information that linked the behaviour to self-empowerment.

One major implication of this body of work, Vail says, is that we should “turn attention and research efforts toward better understanding of how the motivations triggered by death awareness can actually improve people’s lives, rather than how it can cause malady and social strife.”

Write the authors: “The dance with death can be a delicate but potentially elegant stride toward living the good life.”

The study is published in the online edition of Personality and Social Psychology Review.