Flexibility in existential beliefs and worldviews

Being open to questioning and changing one’s own existential beliefs and worldviews is an understudied epistemological tendency we call “existential quest.” We found that existential quest is a specific construct that can be distinguished from related constructs such as searching for meaning in life, readiness to question proreligious beliefs (i.e., religious quest), need for closure, and dogmatism. In five studies, we tested the psychometric qualities of a newly developed 9-item scale and the relationship of existential quest with individual difference variables reflecting ideological and epistemological needs (such as authoritarianism or regulatory focus) and behavioral tendencies (myside bias in an argument generation task). Existential quest showed incremental validity over and above established constructs regarding the prediction of relevant cognitive biases and empathy. The findings indicate the relevance of existential quest as an epistemological construct that seems particularly interesting for research in the developing field of existential psychology