Psychology7 papers
Measuring the unmeasurable: Psychometric tools for Existential Concerns
Key psychometric instruments for measuring existential concerns: meaning in life, existential isolation, and existential anxiety.
ES
Evgeny Smirnov
All Reviews
PsychologyWorth Reading
intermediate
Flexibility in Existential Beliefs and Worldviews
Matthieu Van Pachterbeke et al. (2012)
- Published
- Jan 1, 2012
- Journal
- Journal of Individual Differences · Vol. 33 · No. 1
- DOI
- 10.1027/1614-0001/a000056
At a Glance
Introduces a 9-item scale for "existential quest," measuring flexibility in existential beliefs beyond religiosity.
SummaryAI
The paper proposes "existential quest" (EQ) as a distinct tendency to question and revise one's existential beliefs and worldviews, regardless of whether one is religious. Across five studies in Belgium and Germany, the authors develop and validate a brief 9-item EQ scale and show it is not reducible to religious quest, search for meaning, dogmatism, or need for closure. EQ consistently relates to lower authoritarianism and cognitive rigidity and to higher empathy/altruism, and it predicts less "myside bias" in argument generation even when controlling for adjacent constructs. This provides researchers in existential, social, and personality psychology a compact tool to study open-mindedness specifically about existential worldviews, with implications for understanding ideological rigidity and perspective-taking.
Method SnapshotAI
Psychometric scale development and validation across multiple samples using correlational, behavioral-task, factor-analytic, and IRT analyses.
Background
Basic knowledge of personality/social psychology measurement (psychometrics, individual differences, and construct validity) + Religious Quest Scale + Basic knowledge of existential psychology
The classical Religious quest scale has a limitation: it works only with religious people. EQ resolves this problem, following a similar design of the questions and sharing a similar idea.
— ES