The Effects of Mortality Salience on Disgust Sensitivity Among University Students, Older Adults, and Mortuary Students

Jonathan F Bassett,Michael E Sonntag

doi:10.2174/1874350101003010001

Abstract

The present study tested the Terror Management perspective on disgust by examining the effects of mortality salience on disgust sensitivity among 137 university students, 48 older adults, and 44 mortuary students preparing for a career in the funeral service industry. Participants were randomly assigned to a mortality salience, uncertainty salience, or television salience induction. Following a delay, participants completed the core disgust and contamination disgust sub- scales of the Disgust Scale Revised. University students reported more core disgust than did older adults and mortuary students. Women reported more core and contamination disgust than did men. Mortality salience led to increased disgust sensitivity among all three groups but only on a small number of items related to animals. The results suggest a limited role of terror management defenses in the experience of disgust in response to stimuli that remind people of their animal nature.

Highlights

THE EFFECTS OF MORTALITY SALIENCE ON DISGUST SENSITIVITY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, OLDER ADULTS, AND MORTUARY STUDENTS
The current study examined the effects of mortality salience, only on disgust elicitors that did not explicitly mention death, among mortuary students preparing for a career in funeral service
Planned contrasts revealed that university students reported more core disgust (M = 27.29, SD = 8.92) than did older adults (M = 23.96, SD = 7.72) and mortuary students (M = 23.34, SD = 8.97), t (182.41) = 3.0, p < .01, but older adults and mortuary students did not differ in their reported core disgust, t (82.51) = 0.33, p =

Summary

Introduction

THE EFFECTS OF MORTALITY SALIENCE ON DISGUST SENSITIVITY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, OLDER ADULTS, AND MORTUARY STUDENTS. The present paper examined the effects of experimentally inducing thoughts of death on disgust sensitivity among university students, older adults, and mortuary students The goal of this examination was to further clarify the ongoing debate in the literature as to whether disgust is best conceptualized as an evolved mechanism to avoid biological threats such as ingesting potentially dangerous food or coming into contact with infectious agents [1,2,3,4] or as a culturally constructed mechanism to avoid psychological threats that remind people of their animal nature and their mortality [5,6]. They further suggested that such an analysis was consistent with the claim put forth in Terror Management Theory [11] that people ameliorate anxiety about personal extinction by constructing symbolic forms of identity which are viewed as more enduring and significant than the merely corporeal existence of nonhuman animals

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