Death rituals dampen one’s own mortality dread enough to sustain daily routines

Evidence

Throughout history, and to this day, such rituals have enabled people to endure the loss of loved ones, dampening the dread associated with their own eventual demise to the point where they can continue their daily routines. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 308

Related

• Knowing how death awareness drives defenses enables more self-determined choices (similarity 0.82)
• Death’s most powerful influence operates unseen in normal life (similarity 0.81)
• Adults respond to death reminders with mundane distraction and consumption (similarity 0.80)
• Subtle death reminders drive worldview defense, self-esteem striving, and unhealthy behavior. (similarity 0.80)
• Mortality reminders strengthen religious belief even in atheists (similarity 0.80)
• No account of human behavior is complete without the awareness of death (similarity 0.79)
• Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats (similarity 0.78)
• Accepting mortality reduces destructive unconscious death fears (similarity 0.78)
• Prolonged death contemplation keeps mortality thoughts conscious and suppresses defensive reactions (similarity 0.78)
• People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses (similarity 0.78)
• Death-terror drives art, religion, war, consumerism, and fame-seeking (similarity 0.78)