Effects Of Mortality Salience Research Articles

Why Does Ingroup Identification Shield People from Death Anxiety?

Research to date guided by terror management theory has demonstrated that mortality salience increases ingroup identification. However, the process that leads from death reminders to group investment has remained underinvestigated. We tested a model in which mortality salience increased the perceived continuity of the group while at the same time strengthening the perception of group entitativity. In turn, higher perceived group entitativity led to enhanced ingroup identification. Three-path mediation analysis showed that mortality salience transmitted its effects onto ingroup identification indirectly, progressing first through perceived collective continuity and then through ingroup entitativity. Moderated mediation analysis revealed that personal self-esteem and the need for closure did not moderate this effect of mortality salience on ingroup identification.

Mortality Salience, Self-Esteem and Status Seeking

According to the Terror Management Theory, the fear of death may induce anxiety and threaten individual self-esteem. To remove this fear, individuals need to obtain and sustain self-esteem, for example by competing in rank order tournaments, or by focusing on status seeking. Within an experimental setting, this paper investigates the effect of Mortality Salience on individual productivity, manipulating the information on subjects’ relative performance in a real-effort task where the economic incentive is to not perform: in a first treatment subjects receive only private feedback, which may have effects on productivity via individual self-esteem, while in a second treatment subjects receive public feedback, which may have effects on productivity via status seeking. Our results suggest that the majority of subjects exposed to death-related thoughts tend to be more sensitive to in-group conformity when both types of feedback are provided.

The Effects of Mortality Salience and Reminders of Terrorism on Perceptions of Interrogation Techniques

Through a novel application of terror management theory, we investigated the effect of mortality salience and reminders of terrorism on people's perceptions of the effectiveness and acceptability of interrogation techniques. A dimensional structure by which people perceive interrogation techniques was identified. Mortality salience was found to induce higher levels of acceptance of violent and demeaning techniques, but no other significant effects were found. In line with terror management theory, the effect of mortality salience on only the perceived acceptability of violent interrogation techniques suggests that people may be motivated to endorse the usage of punitive techniques on military prisoners, regardless of the perceived effectiveness of these techniques.

Existential neuroscience: effects of mortality salience on the neurocognitive processing of attractive opposite-sex faces.

Being reminded of the inherently finite nature of human existence has been demonstrated to elicit strivings for sexual reproduction and the formation and maintenance of intimate relationships. Recently, it has been proposed that the perception of potential mating partners is influenced by mortality salience. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neurocognitive processing of attractive opposite-sex faces after priming with death-related words for heterosexual men and women. Significant modulations of behavioral and neural responses were found when participants were requested to decide whether they would like to meet the presented person. Men were more in favor of meeting attractive women after being primed with death-related words compared to a no-prime condition. Increased neural activation could be found under mortality salience in the left anterior insula and the adjacent lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) for both men and women. As previously suggested, we believe that the lPFC activation reflects an approach-motivated defense mechanism to overcome concerns that are induced by being reminded of death and dying. Our results provide insight on a neurocognitive level that approach motivation in general, and mating motivation in particular is modulated by mortality salience.

The effects of earthquake salience and mortality salience on their corresponding compensatory behavior.

The effects of earthquake salience and mortality salience on their corresponding compensatory behavior.

Different terror management strategies in practising Christians raised with religious or secular world views and implications for counselling

This study examined the effect of mortality salience on cultural world views defence strategies employed by participants who were raised within the Christian faith compared with those who converted to Christianity as adults. As predicted, mortality salience did not lead to increased defence of participants’ secular Australian cultural world views. However, when the sample was divided into ‘raised religious’ and ‘raised secular’ groups, believers who were not raised in the Christian faith and converted to Christianity as adults were more likely to use culturally rather than religiously based world views defence strategies when exposed to reminders of death than were the ‘raised religious’ group. Practical implications for counsellors working with clients facing increased awareness of death and mortality are discussed.

Cultural influences on terror management: Independent and interdependent self-esteem as anxiety buffers

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that self-esteem serves as a defense against the fear of death. Previous research has suggested that independent self-esteem is more salient in individualist cultures, whereas interdependent self-esteem is more salient in collectivist cultures. Thus, we hypothesized that in collectivist cultures, independent self-esteem would play a lesser role and interdependent self-esteem a greater role in terror management, compared to individualist cultures. The results support this prediction. In Study 1, personal self-esteem was negatively associated with death anxiety in samples from a Western (Austria) and Eastern (China) culture. However, both self-liking and self-competence were negatively associated with death anxiety among Austrian participants, but only self-liking (and not self-competence) was so among Chinese participants. Surprisingly, collective self-esteem was not significantly correlated with death anxiety. Yet, Study 2 showed that among Chinese participants, relational self-esteem was negatively associated with death anxiety. Study 3 examined the roles of relational versus personal self-esteem in moderating the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. Among Chinese participants, relational rather than personal self-esteem increased the defense of worldviews centered on collectivist-Chinese values following mortality salience (Study 3a). In contrast, among Austrian participants, personal rather than relational self-esteem attenuated the effect of mortality salience on the defense of individualist-Austrian worldviews (Study 3b). Self-esteem serves a terror management function in both collectivist and individualist cultures; however, the differences between cultural worldviews determine the type of self-esteem that is more relevant to terror management processes.

Dying to remember, remembering to survive: Mortality salience and survival processing

Processing items for their relevance to survival improves recall for those items relative to numerous other deep processing encoding techniques. Perhaps related, placing individuals in a mortality salient state has also been shown to enhance retention of items encoded after the morality salience manipulation (e.g., in a pleasantness rating task), a phenomenon we dubbed the “dying-to-remember” (DTR) effect. The experiments reported here further explored the effect and tested the possibility that the DTR effect is related to survival processing. Experiment 1 replicated the effect using different encoding tasks, demonstrating that the effect is not dependent on the pleasantness task. In Experiment 2 the DTR effect was associated with increases in item-specific processing, not relational processing, according to several indices. Experiment 3 replicated the main results of Experiment 2, and tested the effects of mortality salience and survival processing within the same experiment. The DTR effect and its associated difference in item-specific processing were completely eliminated when the encoding task required survival processing. These results are consistent with the interpretation that the mechanisms responsible for survival processing and DTR effects are overlapping.

The effects of mortality salience and evidence strength on death penalty sentencing decisions

The nature of capital cases necessarily makes mortality a highly salient factor in the courtroom. Terror management theory research has previously explored mortality salience effects on behavior in a variety of contexts, including legal judgments. We sought to extend this line of research by directly examining mortality salience effects in the context of capital trials. In Study 1, mock jurors who had been specifically asked to contemplate their own mortality and exposed to trial-related death references (Dual-Focused Mortality [DFM]) were more likely to appropriately weigh evidence regarding defendant future dangerousness than participants only exposed to trial-related death references (Trial-Focused Mortality [TFM]). In Study 2, we manipulated mitigating factor strength using a different capital sentencing scenario. Consistent with the results of Study 1, DFM participants were more likely to appropriately utilize mitigating evidence than TFM participants, particularly when they had more complete comprehension of relevant legal concepts.

Mortality salience and uncertainty: Similar effects but different processes?

AbstractThree experimental studies investigated whether death‐thoughts avoidance as a consequence of mortality salience and need for certainty as a consequence of uncertainty are two different motivational states. The results suggest that although death‐thought avoidance and need for certainty are different constructs, they share a great deal of variance (anxiety plays a pivotal mediational role in both). However, whereas the impact of uncertainty on negative attitudes towards an out‐group with different worldviews (Arabs) was mediated only by anxiety (measured retrospectively), the effect of mortality salience was mediated by both retrospective anxiety and death‐thought accessibility. These findings imply that similar effects that have been obtained by these two manipulations are, at least partly, the result of different processes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Aspects of Love: The Effect of Mortality Salience and Attachment Style on Romantic Beliefs

Two studies are reported which explore romance as a means of terror management for participants with secure and insecure attachment styles. Mikulincer and Florian (2000) have shown that while mortality salience increases the desire for intimacy in securely attached individuals, the insecurely attached use cultural world views rather than close relationships to cope with fear of death. Study 1 used the romantic belief scale to compare the effects of attachment style and mortality salience on the cultural aspects of close relationships and showed that the only the insecurely attached were more romantic following mortality salience. Study 2 replicated this effect and demonstrated that this difference was not simply due to lower self-esteem in the insecurely attached. The additional inclusion of the Relationship assessment questionnaire failed to provide any evidence that the securely attached were affected by the mortality salience manipulation, even on a more interpersonal measure.

Death Goes to the Polls: A Meta‐Analysis of Mortality Salience Effects on Political Attitudes

Terror management theory posits that people are motivated to affirm cultural meaning systems, including political ideologies, to avoid the awareness of mortality. Accordingly, studies show that increasing mortality salience (MS) intensifies people's attitudes toward political issues and figures. However, whereas in some studies MS increases affirmation of preexisting political ideologies, be they liberal or conservative (supporting a “worldview‐defense hypothesis”), in other studies MS elicits a general shift toward conservatism, regardless of preexisting ideology (supporting a “conservative‐shift hypothesis”). The current study used meta‐analysis to assess the overall magnitude of MS effects on explicitly political attitudes and to clarify the nature of these effects by comparing effect sizes for these competing hypotheses. The overall effect of MS on political attitudes was large (r = .50). The effects of MS‐induced worldview defense (r = .35) and conservative shifting (r = .22) were significant and statistically equivalent. We discuss the conditions (e.g., contextual salience of political values) under which conservative shifting or worldview defense occurs.

Generosity, greed, norms, and death – Differential effects of mortality salience on charitable behavior

Terror management theory (TMT) states that mortality salience prompts people to follow cultural standards. But many cultures value both generosity and accumulation of wealth. Combining TMT with the focus theory of normative conduct, we suggest that whether mortality salience encourages generosity or greed depends on the norm(s) salient in the situation. In Study 1 mortality salience led Americans to give less money to foreign charities. Study 2 replicated this effect, and showed it can be eliminated by activating a generosity norm. However, people who valued money as highly important donated less money following mortality salience. Study 3 showed that following mortality salience and a fairness prime, people behaved more generously when splitting money between themselves and an anonymous partner.

死亡凸显效应综述：知死而后生<br>A Summary of the Mortality Salience Effect: A Theory against Death

死亡凸显效应(Mortality Salience Effect)是恐惧管理理论最重要的假设之一，指个体在死亡凸显后出现的世界观防御、自尊寻求等一系列心理防御现象，目前该领域的研究主要以探讨死亡凸显对个体行为的影响为主。本文通过梳理死亡凸显效应的相关理论和实证研究，对其理论来源、基本观点、效应独特性及恐惧管理策略进行了综述。由于受文化、宗教、个人特质等因素影响明显，使得实验室的死亡问题研究长期以来都受到信度和效度不足的诟病。因此，在借鉴前人研究的基础上，未来研究可考虑从以下几点进行再探讨：1) 变量控制上，注重区分死亡凸显和其他威胁性刺激效应的不同；2) 技术方法上，有效利用ERP和fMRI等技术考察死亡凸显效应的神经心理机制；3) 借鉴中国文化生死观开展死亡凸显效应的本土化研究。 Mortality salience effect refers to psychological defense systems as the wordview defense/ self-esteem. In this paper, major viewpoints, strategies and researches are illuminated. However, complicated factors as culture and characteristics, make laboratory studies criticized by insufficient reliability and validity. Future research can lay emphasis on the following aspects: 1) on variable control, pay attention to distinguish death reminder and other threatening stimulus; 2) on technical approach, utilize ERP and fMRI effectively to investigate neuropsychological mechanism of mortality salience effect; 3) on research orientation, consult Chinese life-death to launch indigenous research.

Destined to die but not to wage war: How existential threat can contribute to escalation or de-escalation of violent intergroup conflict.

War means threat to people's lives. Research derived from terror management theory (TMT) illustrates that the awareness of death leads people to defend cultural ingroups and their worldviews to attain a sense of symbolic immortality and thereby buffer existential anxiety. This can result in hostile effects of mortality salience (MS), such as derogation of outgroup members, prejudice, stereotyping, aggression, and racism, which, in turn, can lead to the escalation of violent intergroup conflict and, thus, the escalation of war. Yet, escalation of destructive conflict following MS is not automatic. Instead, research on TMT suggests that MS does not necessarily result in conflict and intolerance but can also foster positive tendencies, such as intergroup fairness or approval of pacifism, depending on how existential threat is perceived, whether the need for symbolic self-transcendence is satisfied, which social norms are salient, and how social situations are interpreted. In the present article, we review current TMT research with the aim of reconciling the seemingly contradictory findings of hostile and peaceful reactions to reminders of death. We present a terror management model of escalation and de-escalation of violent intergroup conflicts, which takes into account the interaction between threat salience and features of the social situation. We also discuss possible intervention strategies to override detrimental consequences of existential threat and argue that war is not the inevitable consequence of threat.

Toward a Biological Understanding of Mortality Salience (And Other Threat Compensation Processes)

Terror management theorists have proposed explanations of why death anxiety has a special status beyond other anxieties and furthermore argue that awareness of death elicits a defense mechanism that is qualitatively different from other sorts of threat-defense mechanisms. Our review suggests that the biological mechanisms through which thoughts of mortality motivate defensive behavior are not unique. Rather, we propose that an evolutionarily primitive, biologically based anxiety system underlies mortality salience (MS) effects. Death anxiety may well be a mainspring of human activity, yet we suggest that a fundamental set of biological responses to uncertainty—and the processes associated with them—lie at the root of MS defenses. Our proposed motivational account of mortality salience provides a biologically informed, mechanistic elucidation of threat-compensation processes that may be applied to a wide range of social psychological phenomena.

Mortality Salience Effects on Selective Exposure and Web Browsing Behavior

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.

A Terror Management Analysis of Perceived Purpose: The Effects of Mor-tality Salience on Attributions for Occurrences

The current paper presents the results from two studies designed to test the hypothesis, derived from Terror Management Theory, that reminders of death would increase the need to perceive telos or purpose behind occurrences in the social world. In Study 1, mortality salience increased university students' perception that the events described in vi- gnettes happened for a reason or purpose but only when the consequences were life altering and negative. In Study 2, mortality salience decreased university students' perception that life-altering occurrences that affected other people were due to luck or chance. The results of these studies are interpreted as evidence that the need to believe that everything hap- pens for a reason is motivated by a desire to manage existential anxiety.

The Effect of Mortality Salience on Implicit Bias

Previous research in terror management theory has shown that when individuals are reminded of their mortality, negative evaluations of out-group members increase. This previous research has used a variety of methods to investigate the change in attitudes toward out-group members. These methods generally permit participants time to consciously reflect during responding. In the present study, the authors hypothesized that reminding individuals of their mortality would increase implicit bias toward out-group members when measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In the experiment, White participants were randomly assigned to complete a written essay about imagining their own death (i.e., mortality salience condition) or an essay regarding an upcoming exam (i.e., control condition), and then participants completed an evaluative IAT. The results revealed that participants who had been reminded of their mortality took longer to associate names of Black individuals with positive words when compared to a control group. The implications of these findings are considered.

Who Uses Groups to Transcend the Limits of the Individual Self? Exploring the Effects of Interdependent Self-Construal and Mortality Salience on Investment in Social Groups

Terror management theory posits that people identify with and invest in culturally derived social groups, in part, to attach the self to something more permanent than one’s physical existence. Accordingly, research demonstrates that reminders of mortality (mortality salience) increase investment in culturally derived in-groups. The current research extends this analysis by examining whether amplified in-group investment following mortality salience is primarily characteristic of people who define the self in terms of social groups (interdependent self-construal). Three studies provided support for this assertion. Mortality salience increased: identification with one’s nation among Chinese (high interdependence culture) but not American (low interdependence culture) participants (Study 1); positivity toward one’s university for students with high, but not low, interdependent self-construal (Study 2); and willingness to self-sacrifice for one’s religious group among participants induced to adopt an interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal (Study 3).