Identity, meaning in life, and death anxiety: When authenticity and self-worth matter

Although meaning in life (MIL) is broadly associated with lower death anxiety (DA) and identity has been proposed as a source of meaning, both relationships show inconsistencies across studies, suggesting that self-evaluative processes such as self-worth and authenticity may condition their effects. The present study examined two sets of conditional associations: whether self-worth and authenticity moderate the identity-MIL association, and whether they moderate the MIL-DA association. A community sample of 404 Turkish adults (62% women) completed self-report measures of identity, MIL, DA, self-worth, and authenticity. Moderation analyses (PROCESS Model 2) revealed that authenticity moderated the collective identity-MIL association, which was stronger at lower authenticity levels and attenuated at higher levels. Self-worth moderated the MIL-DA association, which was stronger among individuals with higher comparative self-worth. Findings suggest that identity-meaning and meaning-death anxiety associations are not uniform but may vary as a function of self-evaluative processes.