Moderating Role of Death Attitude in the Relationship between Existential Vacuum and Spiritual Wellbeing

Abstract

The primary goal of the present research was to examine the moderating role of death attitude between existential vacuum and spiritual wellbeing in a purposive sample of N = 300 students of University of Sargodha. Existential vacuum subscale derived from Life Attitudes Profile (LAP; Reker & Peacock, 1981), Spiritual Wellbeing Scale (Darvyri et al., 2014), and Death Attitudes Profile (DAP; Wong, Reker, & Gesser, 1994) were used to measure existential vacuum, spiritual wellbeing, and death attitude, respectively. Moderation analyses were undertaken through PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013) and it suggested that death attitude weakened the negative relationship between existential vacuum and spiritual wellbeing. This suggested the buffering role of death attitude against the negative influence of existential vacuum on spiritual wellbeing. In other words, for individuals who have more positive attitude towards death, the negative effect of existential vacuum on spiritual wellbeing is weaker as compared to their counterparts who have less positive attitude towards death. Implications of the present study along with its limitations were discussed and recommendations for future research were suggested.