Terror Management Theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) defines self-esteem as the feeling that one is living up to the standards of their internalized cultural worldview and is consequently worthy of the symbolic and/or literal modes of death transcendence offered by that worldview. Although there is ample evidence for the death-anxiety buffering function of self-esteem, no study to date has assessed the hypothesis that high self-esteem is associated with a stronger sense of symbolic immortality. Supporting this hypothesis, in seven samples (N = 7404) we found that American students with higher self-esteem more strongly believed that they will be remembered and have an impact after they die. Symbolic immortality was also related to greater ingroup identification and lower levels of loneliness, existential isolation, death-thought accessibility, and depression. Additionally, symbolic immortality partially mediated the effect of self-esteem on death-thought accessibility (Samples 4–7) and on depression (Sample 4), although these relationships were also bi-directional with self-esteem partially explaining the variance between symbolic immortality and these constructs. These findings augment the literature delineating the existential function of self-esteem and highlight the potential importance of perceived symbolic immortality to psychological well-being.

恐怖管理理论（Greenberg，Pyszczynski，＆Solomon，1986）将自尊定义为一种感觉，即人们正在达到他们内在的文化世界观的标准，因此值得死亡超越的象征和/或字面意义超越那世界观。尽管有足够的证据证明自尊具有死亡-焦虑缓冲功能，但迄今为止，尚无研究评估高自尊与更强的象征性永生感相关的假设。支持该假设的有七个样本（N = 7404），我们发现自尊心较高的美国学生更坚信，他们会被记住并在死亡后产生影响。象征性的永生还与更大的群体认同感和更低的孤独感，生存孤立性，以死亡为导向的可及性以及沮丧感相关。此外，象征性永生在一定程度上介导了自尊对死亡思维可及性（样本4-7）和抑郁症（样本4）的影响，尽管这些关系也是双向的，自尊也部分解释了象征性永生之间的差异。和这些结构。这些发现增加了描述自尊的生存功能的文献，并突出了感知到的象征性不朽对心理健康的潜在重要性。