Mortality Salience Effects on Selective Exposure and Web Browsing Behavior

Abstract

Issue-related attitudes appear to drive individuals' selective Website browsing behavior, as a match between issue-related attitudes and Website content results in a greater number of page views. However, this relationship between content domain involvement and selective exposure is more complex than current theories hold, as the relationship emerges only when individuals are not primed to reflect on their mortality. Reminders of mortality, which are common in everyday life, lead to a defense motivation, which influences selective exposure behavior. In the control condition, issue-related attitudes predicted Website browsing, but under a mortality salience induction, these attitudes did not predict browsing behavior. Further, response latencies for the measure of individuals' attitudes toward the Website were influenced by their issue-related attitudes in the mortality salience condition but not in the control condition. The patterns of interactions produced in this experiment (N=215) illustrate the relationship between dispositional and situational factors that drive selective exposure in an online context. The results also underscore the importance of using behavioral and process-dependent measures in addition to self-report measures.