Worldview Coherence is Not Optional
Abstract
Human development, affect regulation, and health risk are typically studied as partially independent domains. Here, we integrate these domains into a single developmental–epistemological framework linking worldview coherence (WV), cultural narcissism (CN), affective dysregulation, harm enactment, physiological load, and downstream mortality risk (DR). Using 815 outcome-level effects from over 150 independent studies (cumulative N > 350,000), we show that DR is structured not additively, but by a nonlinear interaction between WV and CN. When low WV co-occurs with elevated CN, downstream risk escalates sharply (R2 ≈ .79), consistent with activation of a self-reinforcing anger- loop cascade. Developmental progression via the progression of virtues (PV) attenuates this cascade (R2 ≈ .36), while higher-order stages correspond to a qualitative regime shift marked by the collapse of risk amplification (R2 ≈ .08). Monte Carlo simulations and robustness analyses confirm that these regimes are stable and not driven by idiosyncratic cases. Crucially, belief content is irrelevant; coherence, congruence, and consistency of worldview function as the primary organizing variable. These findings suggest that downstream mortality risk is developmentally contingent and epistemologically structured, with implications extending beyond traditional trait-based models.