Fear of the unknown is linked to lower life satisfaction and heightened death anxiety

New psychology research indicates that a tendency to find unpredictable situations highly distressing is linked to lower overall life satisfaction. This connection appears to be driven by existential factors, with an inability to tolerate uncertainty relating to a reduced sense of life purpose and a heightened fear of death. The study was published in Psychological Reports.

Unpredictability is an inevitable part of human existence, ranging from daily inconveniences to global crises. For some people, navigating these unknowns is manageable. For others, ambiguous situations trigger a response known as intolerance of uncertainty. This psychological trait involves perceiving unpredictable events as threatening, unacceptable, and highly distressing.

Past research has established that an intolerance of uncertainty is associated with worry and anxiety. However, less attention has been given to how this trait relates to a broader evaluation of a person’s existence, known as life satisfaction. Life satisfaction is a subjective assessment of how well one’s current circumstances align with their personal goals and standards.

The research team wanted to explore whether existential concerns act as a bridge between a fear of the unknown and reduced life satisfaction. “In today’s world, individuals face unprecedented levels of unpredictability—ranging from global crises and economic shifts to personal life challenges,” Osman Hatun, an associate professor in the Department of Psychological Counseling and Guidance at Marmara University in Türkiye, told PsyPost. “While prior research has extensively shown how intolerance of uncertainty fuels anxiety and distress, very little attention was given to how it impacts overall life satisfaction through existential processes.”

Hatun and his colleagues focused on two key existential processes: meaning in life and death anxiety. Meaning in life refers to the feeling that one’s existence has purpose, value, and a sense of direction. Death anxiety involves a persistent uneasiness or fear regarding mortality, the process of dying, and what happens after death.

Because death represents the most extreme uncontrollable and uncertain event, the researchers suspected that individuals who struggle with unpredictability might be especially vulnerable to death anxiety. They proposed a potential pathway where an intolerance of uncertainty relates to a weakened sense of meaning in life, which in turn leaves a person more vulnerable to death anxiety, resulting in lower life satisfaction.

To explore these ideas, the researchers recruited 485 adults living in Türkiye through social media platforms. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 63, with an average age of about 32. Most of the sample identified as female, and all participants reported having experienced at least one adverse life event, such as a natural disaster, severe illness, or the loss of a loved one.

The volunteers completed a series of online questionnaires designed to measure the four central concepts of the study. They answered questions about how upsetting they find unforeseen events to assess their intolerance of uncertainty. To evaluate their meaning in life, they rated how strongly they felt their lives had purpose.

The participants also completed a death anxiety scale, answering questions about how much the ambiguity and inevitability of dying made them anxious. Finally, they rated their agreement with statements regarding their overall life satisfaction, providing a snapshot of their subjective well-being. The researchers then used statistical modeling techniques to observe how these four variables interacted with one another, while accounting for the participants’ age, sex, and number of prior adverse life events.

The results indicated a negative association between an intolerance of uncertainty and life satisfaction. In other words, individuals who found ambiguity highly distressing tended to report lower satisfaction with their lives. The statistical models provided evidence for the researchers’ proposed existential pathway.

A higher intolerance of uncertainty was linked to a lower sense of meaning in life. A reduced sense of meaning in life was, in turn, associated with greater death anxiety. Finally, higher death anxiety was related to lower life satisfaction. Together, an intolerance of uncertainty and meaning in life accounted for 27 percent of the variance in death anxiety among the participants. The full model explained 43 percent of the variance in life satisfaction.

Hatun noted that the size of these effects is highly meaningful. “When looking at statistical models, individual indirect pathways might appear modest in number, but the overall picture reveals strong practical significance,” he said. “In psychological research, explaining nearly half of someone’s life satisfaction through a set of related factors is quite substantial.”

The researchers were also struck by the robustness of these existential links. “It was striking that this sequential existential path remained significant even after controlling for participants’ actual cumulative experiences with adverse life events, such as natural disasters, severe illness, or bereavement,” Hatun added. “This suggests that how a person mentally relates to uncertainty can be just as decisive for their life satisfaction as the objective hardships they have lived through.”

The findings suggest that the emotional burden of uncertainty extends beyond everyday worry. People who have difficulty tolerating the unknown may find it harder to maintain a coherent and purposeful view of life. Without a strong sense of purpose to act as a psychological buffer, they may become more preoccupied with mortality, which takes a toll on their overall contentment.

This dynamic highlights the importance of anchoring oneself in everyday purpose. “Because we cannot eliminate uncertainty from the world, trying to control every unknown is often a losing battle,” the researchers explained. “Instead, our findings suggest that the key to protecting our well-being lies in actively cultivating meaning and purpose in our daily lives—whether through core values, relationships, or community connections.”

The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which examined how self-determination and psychological need satisfaction buffer death anxiety rather than modeling an intolerance of uncertainty. That study similarly found that death-related anxiety is linked to lower life satisfaction. Additionally, a 2021 study of older Hindu pilgrims indicated that experiencing a greater sense of meaning in life is linked to lower death anxiety, mirroring the associations found in the new Turkish sample.

However, the results are in tension with a study covered by PsyPost in 2023. That research found that for individuals with high self-alienation, a greater meaning in life was actually associated with heightened death anxiety. The new study, which evaluated a sample of Turkish adults and focused on an overall pathway rather than looking at specific interactions with self-alienation, did not model this reversed effect.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on data collected at a single point in time, meaning it is impossible to determine the true sequence of events. The researchers can observe that an intolerance of uncertainty and life satisfaction are linked through meaning in life and death anxiety, but they cannot prove that one factor directly causes the other to change. Hatun emphasized this constraint, noting that “cross-sectional data show indirect associations rather than definitive cause-and-effect over time.”

He also cautioned against overinterpreting the findings as a mandate for complete control. “A common misinterpretation we would want to preempt is the belief that intolerance of uncertainty directly or inevitably ruins a person’s life satisfaction, or that individuals must eliminate all uncertainty from their lives to be happy,” Hatun said. “Eliminating uncertainty is neither realistic nor necessary; what matters most is the existential buffer—how uncertainty influences our sense of meaning and purpose.”

Another caveat is that the data came entirely from self-report questionnaires, which rely on individuals accurately perceiving and reporting their own feelings. The sample also consisted exclusively of people who had experienced at least one adverse life event. Because trauma and loss can deeply influence existential thoughts, these patterns might look slightly different in a population without a history of severe adversity.

There is also the cultural context to consider when interpreting these results. In Türkiye, family obligations, community connections, and spiritual beliefs often heavily shape a person’s sense of meaning and their attitudes toward mortality. Hatun noted that because the sample consisted of Turkish adults recruited online, “caution should be exercised when generalizing these conclusions across diverse global populations without longitudinal replication.”

To build on this work, the research team hopes to trace these mechanisms in real time and test meaning-centered interventions. “We plan to examine these pathways across diverse cultural contexts and developmental stages, specifically exploring how cultural meaning frameworks—such as family connectedness and spiritual worldviews—serve as protective buffers,” Hatun said. Ultimately, the researchers hope to inform clinical approaches, such as Logotherapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, to help individuals cultivate resilience in an unpredictable world.

Above all, they hope the research fosters a more compassionate view of human struggles with the unknown. “We would like to emphasize that facing uncertainty is a fundamental part of the human condition, rather than an individual flaw or weakness,” Hatun added. “Our study highlights that while unpredictable events are inevitable, how we actively construct meaning in our daily lives provides an essential psychological anchor.”

The study, “Intolerance of Uncertainty and Life Satisfaction: The Mediating Roles of Meaning in Life and Death Anxiety,” was authored by Osman Hatun, Mark D. Griffiths, and Tuğba Türk Kurtça.