Mortality Salience Hypothesis Research Articles

Touched by Quakes: Mortality Salience and Corporate Philanthropy

ABSTRACT This study examines how natural catastrophes affect corporate philanthropic activities in China. Firms located in areas experiencing severe seismic losses increase charitable donations. The effect is stronger when firms demonstrate stronger social responsibility, operate in higher-mortality regions, and are led by female or elder CEOs, supporting the mortality salience hypothesis. We address endogeneity issues with an instrumental variable and a propensity score matching approaches. Furthermore, firms with higher charitable donations experience a more positive stock market reaction around the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. Overall, our findings suggest that natural catastrophes amplify financial market participants’ mortality salience and affect their economic decisions.

Subliminal mortality salience does not increase physical strength output in double-blind randomized controlled trial.

Using the morality salience paradigm, this research tested whether subliminal death stimuli lead to increased physical strength. Moreover, it was investigated if mindfulness and self-esteem instability influence terror management. In total, data from 160 undergraduate sports students were analyzed. Participants completed a word decision task in which they were presented with either the word death or pain for 28.5 ms. Before and after the task, their grip strength was measured using a hand dynamometer. Linear mixed models could neither confirm the effect of the mortality salience hypothesis on strength nor an influence of mindfulness and self-esteem. The results raise the question of a potential influence of subliminal mortality salience on athletic performance and how mindfulness and self-esteem instability affect terror management.

Exposure to the Death of Others during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Growing Mistrust in Medical Institutions as a Result of Personal Loss.

The prominence of death during the COVID-19 pandemic was heightened by the potential of personally knowing someone who lost their life to the virus. The terror management theory (TMT) suggests that the salient presence of death has a pronounced effect on behavior and may result in the ossification of beliefs and actions aligned with one's worldview (i.e., the mortality salience hypothesis). In this study, we evaluated how death exposure early in the COVID-19 pandemic could enact the process of firming up held beliefs and attitudes related to health and safety. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that exposure to a personal loss during the pandemic would strengthen participants' baseline attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 safety guidelines. Data were analyzed from a prospective, regional survey administered at two time points during the pandemic, June-July 2020 and May 2021, in five United States northeastern states. Baseline and follow-up surveys were administered approximately 12 months apart, with adherence to public guidance and death exposure measured at both timepoints and other safety measures at follow-up only. Our results indicated that there were significant main effects of death exposure on guideline adherence and support for COVID-related public policy. Contrary to the mortality salience hypothesis, death exposures after baseline were related to higher medical mistrust at follow-up for those high in adherence at baseline, rather than those with low adherence. Our results offer some conflicting evidence to the mortality salience hypothesis. Rather than entrench people in their worldviews, death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to sway people away from their initial stances. This finding has important implications for TMT literature and for the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Implicit Attitudes and Terror Management: Pilot of Implicit Association Test as a Means of Measuring Death-Thought Accessibility

Terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) has been extensively tested and applied in a variety of contexts. One of the major criticisms of TMT is that there are methodological issues with assessing some of the proposed processes within the theory, such as activation of death thought accessibility. The present study provides an initial test of a proposed alternative for measuring death thought accessibility using an image-based implicit association test instead of the traditional word fragment completion task used in a majority of TMT research. An experiment was carried out with 200 undergraduate students using a 2 (mortality salience: Yes or no) x 2 (social/fiscal conservatism: Low or high) between-subjects design. Results provided partial empirical support for the use of an IAT-based measure for death thought accessibility relying on color images. The IAT-based measure outperformed the traditional word fragment completion task at discriminating between mortality and non-mortality salient participants in terms of death thought accessibility.Moreover, this study also tested the mortality salience hypothesis to determine whether mortality salience activates cultural worldview defenses following a brief delay. Specifically, participants with differing political ideologies were asked to evaluate an editorial in support of the Muslim ban. Results found that after being reminded of their death, participants with strong levels of conservatism reported more positive attitudes toward the Muslim ban, relative to those in the control condition (i.e., non-mortality salient). Implications of the findings for this study as well as directions for future research are discussed.

Are we truly special and unique? A replication of Goldenberg et al. (2001).

According to the mortality salience hypothesis of terror management theory, reminders of our future death increase the necessity to validate our cultural worldview and to enhance our self-esteem. In Experiment 2 of the study ‘I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness’, Goldenberg et al. (Goldenberg et al. 2001 J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 130, 427–435. (doi:10.1037/0096-3445.130.3.427)) observed that participants primed with questions about their death provided more positive evaluations to an essay describing humans as distinct from animals than control participants presented with questions regarding another aversive situation. In a replication of this experiment conducted with 128 volunteers, we did not observe evidence for a mortality salience effect.

Gezi park protests in Turkey: how can death be related to the protests?

The aim of the paper is to investigate the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey from the perspective of terror management theory (TMT). The Gezi Park Protests started at the end of May 2013 to defend the destruction of a small park. The protests started with environmentalist reactions and acquired a political nature afterwards. The roles of social media and humour are also discussed in relation to the different dimensions of the Gezi Park Protests. TMT, more specifically the mortality salience hypothesis, is used to explain these protests, since they include both the concrete and abstract forms of mortality. The concrete forms of death were the death of trees and the death of protesters themselves. The abstract forms of death, on the other hand, were the death of lifestyle from the protesters’ perspective and death of exercise power from the government’s side. Three necessary conditions for an alternative experimental manipulation in TMT studies are discussed in relation to the Gezi Park Protests. It is concluded that the protests provided a concrete and real-life example of TMT.

Terror Management Theory: The Influence of Terrorism Salience on Anxiety and the Buffering of Cultural Worldview and Self-esteem

Terror management theory has previously explored the buffering of self-esteem and United States cultural worldview upon anxiety and mortality salience. However, the combination of the United Kingdom cultural worldview and terrorism salience, as a construct of mortality salience, has not been examined. The aim of this study was to establish whether the reminder of terrorism (i.e., terrorism salience) could replace the reminder of mortality (i.e., mortality salience) as an experimental reminder of our own deaths. Results revealed that terrorism salience did not produce more anxiety than the other two primed conditions. Self-esteem did not buffer significantly against the anxiety produced by terrorism and mortality conditions. Participants with high self-esteem in the terrorism salience condition were more likely to show an increased worldview defence compared to those with moderate or low self-esteem. This research provides insight into the area of terror management, looking at the influence of terrorism salience and mortality salience. The results showed that, unlike previous studies, a mortality salience manipulation established through a terrorism reminder did not effectively produce anxiety. Despite considerable support for the mortality salience hypothesis, findings show that high self-esteem does not buffer against anxiety or increase worldview defence.

Supersize my identity: when thoughts of contracting swine flu boost one's patriotic identity

AbstractPandemics are socially threatening situations that rapidly spread across large regions. Thinking of contracting dangerous diseases can potentially evoke fear and death‐related thoughts. The aim of the present work was to investigate how individuals respond to fear associated with contracting a pandemic disease (i.e., swine flu). In accordance with the mortality salience hypothesis of terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), we predicted that individuals concerned with contracting swine flu would demonstrate greater investment in cultural worldviews (i.e., patriotism) in response to death anxiety. The implications of these findings for understanding global issues in domains related to health and politics are discussed.

Defensive or Existential Religious Orientations and Mortality Salience Hypothesis: Using Conservatism as a Dependent Measure

The study examined the relationship between the defensive versus existential religious orientation and mortality salience hypothesis in a country where the predominant type of religion is Islam. It was predicted that the mortality reactions of participants would not differ in accordance with their religious orientations within a Muslim sample. The dependent variable tested in the study was conservatism and it was expected that within the Muslim sample both defensively and existentially oriented participants would react to mortality salience manipulation. The defensive participants became more conservative in the mortality salient condition as opposed to failure salience and TV salience conditions. However, contrary to the authors’ hypothesis, existential participants did not react to mortality salience manipulation. The results were discussed in accordance with the self-relevance of the conservatism variable, which is the dependent variable of the study. Research implications and suggestions for future studies were also provided.

Terror Management in a Predominantly Muslim Country

The mortality salience hypothesis of terror management theory was tested in a predominantly Muslim country. In Study 1a, private university students primed with thoughts of death reported more negative evaluations of a paragraph arguing state universities’ superiority to private ones, compared to a control condition in which “death” was replaced by “an important exam.” Study 1b conceptually replicated this finding at a state university. Study 2 found that MS participants wanted their home country to have stronger relations with Turkmenistan and weaker relations with England and Greece. Results were discussed with reference to university and national identity, and implications for future research were noted.