Meaning and death‐thought accessibility

Meaning is a central feature in human life, but death can disrupt a sense of meaning. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that meaning in life and meaning in death are distinct types of meaning when mortality is salient and differentially affect death‐thought accessibility ( DTA ). In Experiment 1, imagining a specific scenario in which meaning is preserved beyond death reduced DTA relative to a standard mortality salience prime; moreover, these effects were not due to changes in self‐esteem. In Experiment 2, imagining a meaningful life when mortality is salient elicited greater DTA , whereas imagining meaning in death elicited less DTA . Imbuing death with meaning attenuates DTA , whereas meaning in life increases DTA .