When Help Harms and Meaning Matters: Social Support and Endogenous Meaning as Moderators of the Relationship Between Existential Nihilism and Wellbeing

Existential nihilism posits that life is meaningless, without purpose, and any search for meaning in existence is similarly pointless. Despite recent concerns of increasing prevalence and negative impacts of nihilism on mental health, its relationship with wellbeing is largely unknown. To investigate the relationship between nihilistic beliefs and wellbeing, we surveyed members of a local university campus (N = 171) and online nihilism communities (N = 750). We also investigated social support and endogenous (self-created) meaning as moderating factors, hypothesizing that higher social support and endogenous meaning would mitigate existential nihilism’s relationship with wellbeing. Existential nihilism was negatively related to wellbeing in both samples. However, while higher endogenous meaning was mitigated, high levels of social support instead increased the severity of this relationship. Our findings support concerns that existential nihilism negatively influences wellbeing, but suggests this relationship may differ on the basis of other factors, and not always in the ways expected.