It feels like I covered a more empirical perspective (like the one your are describing) in this body of text, that I had left in a different comment:

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Nihilism is inherently dysfunctional. ... We could even define morality as an *evolutionary mental construct* (not an arbitrary social construct) that nature developed to to steer us away from nihilistic beliefs.

... When we define the meaningfulness of a belief system, we must do so not by whether or not the belief system is actually statistically accurate, but by the practical effect that the belief system (regardless of whether or not it serves as a mere metaphor) has on the people who practice it.

Sometime after we separated from other primates about 150,000 years ago, those of us who had no innate sense of purpose and morality killed each other off (apparently). ... So those of us who remained, had this innate sense of morality and responsibility. From a tangible, practical perspective, we can define "God" as the idealistic, non-depressing narrative that is as far from Absolute Nihilism as possible. ... Our bodies have a built-in self-destruct mechanism for those of us who choose not to have a purpose and code of ethics (those of us who accept the nihilistic narrative). This self-destruct mechanism involves an overwhelming depression that cripples the individual to prevent him/her from doing genocide or whatever stupidity the nihilistic cave men used to that lead to their extinction. And so the human species evolved to have this innate sense of responsibility/ethics/purpose.

And those of us who "figured out" that morality is "just a social construct" get stuck with depression, with the intensity of that depression varying depending on how close they are to believing in Absolute Nihilism. ... Those of us who experience depression as a disorder, for biochemical reasons, embody this exact same spectrum, with suicidal depression and Absolute Nihilism on one end of the belief spectrum, and on the other other the spectrum are people who believe in God (even if they are statistically wrong) and people who are in love, who sometimes affirm out loud "life makes perfect sense".