ABSTRACT

Existential nihilism is on the rise in modern societies, but no previous work has investigated the social psychology of seeing no meaning in life. In the current research, five studies (N = 1,634) show that targets’ existential nihilist beliefs elicit a range of negative stereotypes about personality traits, commonly valued social traits, and targets’ ability to perform basic adaptive social tasks. Results demonstrate that these negative stereotypes are mediated by belief that the target is depressed more than the belief the target is non-religious or that the target does not plan for the future. Unlike atheists, who are seen as competent, no positive stereotypes emerged for nihilists, suggesting both future research and interventions aimed at updating false beliefs about nihilists.

 抽象的

存在主义虚无主义在现代社会中正在兴起，但之前没有任何著作研究过认为生活没有意义的社会心理。在当前的研究中，五项研究（ N = 1,634）表明，目标的存在主义虚无主义信念引发了一系列关于人格特征、普遍重视的社会特征以及目标执行基本适应性社会任务的能力的负面刻板印象。结果表明，这些负面刻板印象是由“目标更加抑郁”的信念所介导的，而不是“目标没有宗教信仰”或“目标没有为未来做计划”的信念。与被视为有能力的无神论者不同，虚无主义者没有出现积极的刻板印象，这表明未来的研究和干预措施旨在更新关于虚无主义者的错误信念。