The John Locke Essay Competition officially opened registration on 2 February 2026. All entrants must complete registration by 31 March 2026, Greenwich Mean Time.
Now let us follow Ms. Shen’s guidance and explore possible approaches to the psychology questions.
A Guide to the 2026 John Locke Psychology Questions
Hello, I am your academic mentor, Ms. Shen. Today we will take an in-depth look at the three annual essay questions in the Psychology category of the John Locke Essay Competition. These questions point respectively to the deep structure of human awareness of existence, the shifting paradigm of how we understand mental health, and the political reconstruction of gender identity. Each invites us into some of the most cutting-edge debates in psychology.
Question 1: Why do we care what happens to our body after death?
This question touches one of the deepest paradoxes of human existence. Once consciousness disappears, the body can no longer feel, experience, or respond. Why, then, does it still move us emotionally, consume our resources, and carry such ritual importance?
One useful starting point is the problem of mortality awareness. Human beings possess the rare cognitive ability to anticipate their own death, and this awareness creates a persistent and inescapable anxiety. Terror Management Theory, developed by Pyszczynski, Greenberg, and Solomon, argues that in order to cope with this anxiety, we construct cultural worldviews: symbolic systems that give life meaning and promise a form of continuity beyond death.
Death rituals are among the central practices through which these worldviews are maintained. By participating in culturally prescribed rituals, individuals gain the reassuring sense that they belong to a meaningful world. Funerals, cemeteries, and memorials all function as symbolic attempts to transcend death. The ritual process itself reaffirms a culture’s core values. For example, why has traditional burial remained so deeply rooted in the United States despite environmental concerns? Terror Management Theory suggests that such practices provide symbolic reassurance that the body does not simply vanish, helping to buffer the primitive fear of bodily decomposition.
Erikson’s eighth developmental stage, “ego integrity versus despair,” is also relevant here. In later life, individuals seek coherence and closure by reflecting on the meaning of their lives. Death rituals, whether arranged in advance or carried out by loved ones afterward, become key mechanisms in this search for wholeness. Such rituals are not only for the deceased. They also serve the living, who use them to confirm that the life of the dead had meaning and, by extension, that their own lives may also achieve meaning.
A second framework comes from symbolic interactionism, which emphasizes that people act toward things on the basis of the meanings they assign to them through social interaction. The dead body becomes a powerful symbol in this sense. It is a carrier of social meaning, since funerals, memorials, and gravesites are public spaces in which communities construct understandings of death. It is also a medium through which relationships continue, serving as a material anchor between the living and the dead. Finally, it expresses cultural identity, because ways of treating the body after death differ widely across traditions and often reflect deeply held beliefs.
Recent research develops this idea further. Leichtentritt and colleagues, in a qualitative study of bereaved individuals, found that mourners often maintain their relationship with the deceased through three kinds of bodily association. First, they may feel that aspects of the deceased continue to exist within their own bodies, whether as memories, traits, or even a kind of spiritual presence. Second, they may preserve the connection through embodied actions such as touching belongings or visiting gravesites. Third, they may continue to perceive and care for the deceased body, even when the body is no longer physically present. The study suggests that when society rejects these bodily strategies, mourners may experience a form of “disembodiment,” feeling cut off both from their own bodily selves and from the deceased.
Research from the Open University similarly argues that death does not simply end relationships. The “me” of the living person and the “us” of the relationship remain, though transformed, and important dimensions of the “you” of the deceased also continue in altered form. The body becomes a vehicle through which this transformed relationship persists in material practice.
A third perspective emerges from secularization. As more people move away from religious frameworks, they must find new ways to make sense of death. Pew data suggest that roughly one in six Americans does not believe in an afterlife. This creates a new psychological challenge. If there is no soul and no heaven, what significance does the body still hold?
Research suggests that nonreligious individuals do not simply fall into nihilism. Instead, they often develop alternative systems of meaning. Park’s theory of integrative meaning-making helps explain this process. When confronted with stressful events such as death, people either assimilate the experience into an existing worldview or accommodate by revising that worldview. For nonreligious individuals, this may mean replacing sacred values with environmental values by choosing green burial, human composting, or alkaline hydrolysis in order to align bodily treatment with ecological convictions. It may also mean viewing the body as a material anchor of ongoing relationships, even in the absence of belief in an immortal soul. Or it may involve understanding bodily return to nature as a meaningful completion of the cycle of life.
Some scholars describe this as a “relational-indicative framework,” in which meaning does not come from an external designer or divine order but from the relationship between the perceiver and the object. On this view, the body after death matters not because it is sacred in itself, but because it remains bound up with the living in networks of memory, identity, and care.
Why, then, do we care what happens to our body after death? The answer seems to operate on multiple levels. Existentially, death awareness is a uniquely human burden, and bodily rituals help us manage that anxiety. Relationally, the body serves as a material anchor for love, grief, and memory. In terms of identity, bodily treatment expresses who we are culturally and personally. And symbolically, it offers a way to create some form of continuation in the face of absolute ending.
Recommended Reading for Question 1
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). “A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory.”
Leichtentritt, R. D., et al. (2016). “The body as a site of continuing relationships: A qualitative study of bereaved individuals’ experiences.”
Park, C. L. (2010). “Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events.”
Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death.
Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying.
Ariès, P. (1974). Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present.
Walter, T. (1994). The Revival of Death.
Seale, C. (1998). Constructing Death: The Sociology of Dying and Bereavement.
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Question 2: Is mental illness over-diagnosed now, or just better recognised?
At first glance, this question seems straightforward. In reality, it points to one of the central controversies in contemporary mental health: are we witnessing progress in awareness and recognition, or are we pathologizing ordinary human life?
There are two opposing narratives here. The over-diagnosis narrative argues that diagnostic criteria have become too broad, turning normal emotional fluctuations into pathology. It suggests that pharmaceutical companies have helped create new “illnesses” in order to sell medication, and that wider cultural habits of self-labeling have encouraged a flood of self-diagnosis. The risk, according to this view, is the medicalization of ordinary suffering and the unnecessary production of “patients.”
The better-recognition narrative tells a different story. It argues that reduced stigma has made more people willing to seek help, that diagnostic tools have improved, and that many previously overlooked cases are now finally being identified. Epidemiological evidence, on this view, does not show an abnormal explosion in prevalence, but rather improved detection. The risk in this case is under-recognition, which prevents treatment and worsens long-term outcomes.
The complication is that both narratives may be true at once. Some groups may indeed be over-diagnosed, while others remain under-identified. Yet the competition question asks for an overall judgment.
Recent evidence from the United Kingdom provides an important clue. The STADIA trial, published in 2025, followed 1,225 young people referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for emotional difficulties over an eighteen-month period. The key finding was striking: 67 percent of participants met the threshold for at least one diagnosable emotional disorder on standardized assessment tools, but only 11 percent received a clinical diagnosis of an emotional disorder from services. That means that within a group already referred to specialist care, there was a 56-percentage-point gap between diagnostic threshold and actual diagnosis. The researchers concluded that a substantial level of emotional difficulty meeting diagnostic criteria was simply not being recognised.
The ADaPT project focused on children in social care, a population already known to face high levels of mental health need. Again, the pattern was under-recognition. Staff often used broad terms such as “attachment issues” or “trauma symptoms” rather than identifying specific, treatable mental disorders. The consequences were serious: referrals were often rejected, psychological needs were reframed as social care issues, and access to evidence-based mental health interventions remained limited.
Why does under-recognition persist even in specialist settings? Qualitative studies suggest that clinicians often prefer a “formulation-only” approach, avoiding potentially relevant diagnoses. Their reasons include concern about stigma, discomfort with labeling, and suspicion of over-medicalization. These concerns are particularly strong when children have complex life histories. Yet this avoidance can be problematic. Researchers often use a comparison with physical illness: if a child exposed to second-hand smoke develops serious breathing problems, it would be inappropriate to refuse an asthma diagnosis simply because the child’s home life is complicated. Likewise, difficult circumstances should not prevent recognition of identifiable and treatable mental disorders.
Interestingly, young people and their parents or carers often express a preference for diagnosis, viewing it as the first step toward getting appropriate help. This stands in contrast to the hesitations of clinicians and may affect both engagement with services and long-term outcomes.
At the same time, diagnosis can be a double-edged sword. Sayal and colleagues’ 2010 longitudinal study on ADHD screening offers a cautionary example. The research found that among children identified as showing high levels of ADHD-related behavior, those who were identified but did not receive educational intervention actually had worse outcomes five years later. This suggests an important principle: diagnosis must be linked to effective support. Simply applying a label without providing real help can do harm. But that is not an argument against diagnosis itself. It is an argument for pairing diagnosis with meaningful intervention.
On the basis of current evidence, the larger problem appears not to be over-diagnosis but under-recognition. Even within specialist services, many cases meeting diagnostic thresholds remain unidentified, leaving young people without access to evidence-based treatment. This conclusion seems especially strong for children and adolescents. That said, over-diagnosis may still occur in particular situations, among certain groups, or through inaccurate forms of self-diagnosis. But from a public health perspective, the more urgent issue seems to be the treatment gap created by failure to recognise mental illness.
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Recommended Reading for Question 2
Sayal, K., et al. (2010). “ADHD and children who are ‘hard to teach’: A prospective longitudinal study.”
STADIA Trial Research Group (2025). “Recognition of emotional disorders in children and young people referred to mental health services: Findings from the STADIA trial.”
ADaPT Project Team (2024). “Mental health needs and service access in children’s social care: The ADaPT study.”
Horwitz, A. V., & Wakefield, J. C. (2007). The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder.
Frances, A. (2013). Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life.
Hinshaw, S. P., & Scheffler, R. M. (2014). The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance.
Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.
Moncrieff, J. (2008). The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment.
Question 3: Surveys show a widening gender ideological gap in recent years. Why?
This is an inherently interdisciplinary question, linking social psychology, political psychology, evolutionary psychology, and developmental psychology. Recent data do indeed point to a striking trend: young men and young women are becoming more politically divided, even as structural differences in education and income continue to narrow.
To begin with, the pattern itself needs description. Since around 2014, young women in the United States have become increasingly likely to identify as liberal, while young men have remained relatively stable in their political orientation. By 2021, 44 percent of young women described themselves as liberal, compared with only 25 percent of young men. This was the largest gender gap in political identification recorded over twenty-four years of polling. Similar developments have also appeared across many advanced economies. The puzzle is that although women have continued to close gaps in education, income, and professional achievement, ideological differences have widened rather than diminished.
Evolutionary psychology offers one possible foundation. Trivers’ parental investment theory argues that the sex investing more in reproduction tends to be more selective and more risk-averse in mate choice. This evolutionary logic may have shaped broader psychological tendencies. Greater risk aversion among women may translate into stronger support for welfare systems and social safety nets. Higher average empathy may foster more concern for vulnerable groups and more support for redistribution. By contrast, stronger competitive orientation among men may align more closely with support for market freedom and limited intervention.
Personality psychology provides a related perspective. One of the most consistent sex differences is in agreeableness, with women tending to score higher, especially in trust and tender-mindedness. Agreeableness is positively associated with liberal political identification. Women also tend, on average, to score lower in emotional stability, and lower emotional stability has likewise been linked to more liberal attitudes. Strikingly, these differences are often larger in highly gender-equal societies. Rather than erasing basic differences, equality may create conditions in which they can be expressed more freely.
Helgeson and Fritz’s concept of “unmitigated communion” adds another dimension. Women may be more likely to orient themselves strongly toward the needs of others, sometimes to an excessive degree. This psychological tendency maps neatly onto forms of contemporary political activism, especially those centered on care, marginalization, and protection of vulnerable groups.
But foundational differences alone do not explain the widening gap. Contemporary social and political conditions help activate and intensify them. The MeToo movement heightened many women’s sensitivity to issues of gender inequality and power structures. The rise of identity politics linked political issues more tightly to group identity. Social media algorithms increasingly deliver different kinds of political content to different audiences. Economic insecurity may also trigger different underlying strategies, with women leaning more toward collective security and men more toward individual competition.
Once such a divide begins to form, group identity can deepen it further. Young women may start to see liberalism as part of female group identity, while young men may come to regard rejection of the left as part of male group identity. Political beliefs then become not merely policy preferences but expressions of gendered belonging.
One of the most counterintuitive findings in this field is that gender differences in personality and political attitudes are often larger in more gender-equal societies. This seems to challenge the intuition that everything is socially constructed. One explanation is that in less equal societies, rigid social roles suppress the expression of basic tendencies. In more equal settings, people have greater freedom to develop in line with their underlying preferences. Once basic rights become more equal, attention shifts to the “remaining differences,” which may reflect temperament, personality, and preference more strongly. When survival pressures diminish, people may also feel freer to express what they genuinely value.
A useful analogy comes from cross-national differences in crying frequency. Women cry more often than men across societies, but the gap is larger in wealthier and more equal countries, where emotional expression is more socially permitted. The same logic may apply to ideology: equality does not necessarily flatten difference; it may instead make difference more visible.
Still, there are important dangers in how one handles this argument. One is the trap of essentialism: treating average group differences as natural, fixed, and morally justified. Average differences do not erase enormous variation among individuals, nor do they justify any form of discrimination. Another is the trap of reductionism: no single factor can adequately explain a complex social phenomenon. A convincing essay will need an integrative framework that combines personality, identity, social context, and political change.
Recommended Reading for Question 3
Eagly, A. H., & Diekman, A. B. (2005). “Examining gender gaps in sociopolitical attitudes: The roles of social role orientation and human values.”
Trivers, R. L. (1972). “Parental investment and sexual selection.”
Helgeson, V. S., & Fritz, H. L. (1999). “Unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion: Distinctions from agency and communion.”
Schmitt, D. P., et al. (2008). “Why can’t a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures.”
Falk, A., & Hermle, J. (2018). “Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality.”
Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2003). Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World.
Gidengil, E., et al. (2003). Gender and Social Capital.
Huddy, L., et al. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology.
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