Mortality Salience Research Articles

Hominin skeletal part abundances and claims of deliberate disposal of corpses in the Middle Pleistocene

Humans are set apart from other organisms by the realization of their own mortality. Thus, determining the prehistoric emergence of this capacity is of significant interest to understanding the uniqueness of the human animal. Tracing that capacity chronologically is possible through archaeological investigations that focus on physical markers that reflect "mortality salience." Among these markers is the deliberate and culturally mediated disposal of corpses. Some Neandertal bone assemblages are among the earliest reasonable claims for the deliberate disposal of hominins, but even these are vigorously debated. More dramatic assertions center on the Middle Pleistocene sites of Sima de los Huesos (SH, Spain) and the Dinaledi Chamber (DC, South Africa), where the remains of multiple hominin individuals were found in deep caves, and under reported taphonomic circumstances that seem to discount the possibility that nonhominin actors and processes contributed to their formation. These claims, with significant implications for charting the evolution of the "human condition," deserve scrutiny. We test these assertions through machine-learning analyses of hominin skeletal part representation in the SH and DC assemblages. Our results indicate that nonanthropogenic agents and abiotic processes cannot yet be ruled out as significant contributors to the ultimate condition of both collections. This finding does not falsify hypotheses of deliberate disposal for the SH and DC corpses, but does indicate that the data also support partially or completely nonanthropogenic formational histories.

Does the Awareness of Mortality Shape People's Openness to Violence and Conflict? An Examination of Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that evoking death‐related thoughts (mortality salience; MS) in individuals or groups can lead to stronger worldview defence and greater support for extremist violence. In three experiments, we tested whether an MS manipulation, and associated moderators, increased support for extremist violence. In Australian university students, Study 1 found no statistically significant main or moderated effects for MS on measures of extremist violence. However, participants exposed to the MS manipulation reported increases in conservative religiosity (belief in divine power). In Study 2, the MS manipulation had no significant effect on support for extremist violence for Australian university students primed with an antiviolent extremism norm. And in young Australian Jewish people (Study 3), the MS manipulation did not increase support for violence against migrants. However, there was an increase in support for policies that act to fight against violent extremism in Iraq and Syria in those exposed to the MS manipulation. Across three studies, we find little support for the hypothesis that MS results in increased support for violent extremism. Larger more methodological sound studies are needed to address inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding TMT and the MS hypothesis, at least in regards to violence and extremism.

Finding Meaning in Nostalgia

Nostalgia—defined as sentimental longing for one's past—is a self-relevant, albeit deeply social, and an ambivalent, albeit more positive than negative, emotion. As nostalgia brings the past into present focus, it has existential implications. Nostalgia helps people find meaning in their lives, and it does so primarily by increasing social connectedness (a sense of belongingness and acceptance), and secondarily by augmenting self-continuity (a sense of connection between one's past and one's present). Also, nostalgia-elicited meaning facilitates the pursuit of one's important goals. Moreover, nostalgia acts as a buffer against existential threats. In particular, it shields against meaning threat, and buffers the impact of mortality salience on meaning, collective identity, accessibility of mortality-related thoughts, and death anxiety. Finally, nostalgia confers psychological benefits to individuals with chronic or momentary meaning deficits. These benefits are higher subjective vitality, lower stress, and regulation of meaning-seeking in response to boredom. Taken together, nostalgia helps people attain a more meaningful life, protects from existential threat, and contributes to psychological equanimity.

When You Become a Superman: Subliminal Exposure to Death-Related Stimuli Enhances Men’s Physical Force

Research based on terror management theory (TMT) has consistently found that reminders to individuals about their mortality engender responses aimed at shoring up faith in their cultural belief system. Previous studies have focused on the critical role that the accessibility of death-related thought plays in these effects. Moreover, it has been shown that these effects occur even when death-related stimuli are presented without awareness, suggesting the unconscious effects of mortality salience. Because one pervasive cultural ideal for men is to be strong, we hypothesized that priming death-related stimuli would lead to increasing physical force for men, but not for women. Building on self-escape mechanisms from TMT, we propose that the mechanism that turns priming of death-related stimuli into physical exertion relies on the co-activation of the self with death-related concepts. To test this hypothesis, we subjected 123 participants to a priming task that enabled us to combine the subliminal priming of death-related words with briefly presented self-related words. Accordingly, three different conditions were created: a (control) condition in which only self-related stimuli were presented, a (priming) condition in which death-related words were subliminally primed but not directly paired with self-related stimuli, and a (priming-plus-self) condition in which death-related words were subliminally primed and immediately linked to self-related stimuli. We recorded handgrip force before and after the manipulations. Results showed that male participants in the priming-plus-self condition had a higher peak force output than the priming and control conditions, while this effect was absent among female participants. These results support the hypothesis that unconscious mortality salience, which is accompanied with self-related stimuli, increases physical force for men but not for women. The gender difference may reflect the cultural belief system, in which individuals are taught that men should be strong. Thus, the unconscious mortality salience produced by exposure to the death-related stimuli motivates need to conform to this internalized cultural standard.

Spiritual transcendence as a buffer against death anxiety

Terror Management Theory assumes the existence of two basic buffers against mortality salience: self-esteem and worldview. The aim of the current paper is to propose another buffer against mortality salience, namely spiritual transcendence. In the first study, we studied the impact of activation of spiritual transcendence as a moderator of mortality salience. Activating spiritual transcendence reduced the effect of the increase of the level of altruistic tendencies after exposure to mortality salience. In the second study, we replicated this finding based on the research procedures of former TMT research, using essay attacking participants’ worldview. Results showed that spiritual transcendence acts as a buffer against mortality salience both among religious and non-religious individuals. Therefore, spiritual transcendence seems to be an additional buffer against mortality salience, independent from worldview and self-esteem, and it could be further examined from TMT perspective.

6. Investigating the Societal Impacts of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing, and its Relationship to Mortality Salience, Attraction to Legacy and Attraction to Leisure


 Homo sapiens are the only species that are aware that one’s life is impermanent, and that responds to that awareness with anxiety. Adaptive anxiety buffers include delusion through ‘legacy drive’ and ‘leisure drive’, which have been proposed as fundamental components in defining the evolutionary roots of human nature and sociocultural evolution. This study evaluates how legacy and leisure drive are impacted by mortality salience and ideas of genetic testing, and analyzes advancements in genomic technology and its societal implications. In this project, indicators of variation in legacy drive and leisure drive, due to mortality salience and genetic testing priming, were assessed based on participant responses (n=1449) from faculty and students at Queen’s University in an online survey. Direct-to-consumer personal genome testing is poised to usher in a new era of medicine through empowering individuals to learn and understand their own genetic make-up. Behavioural changes between sexes were evaluated in terms of Darwinian theory. This was assessed in conjunction with domains of legacy and connected with participant responses to recent and expanding opportunities for genomic testing—including in the context of so-called ‘designer babies—with potential for playing a role in modulating the evolution of humans both biologically and culturally. Results will be used to test for relationships between variation in demographic/gender traits and preferences associated with mortality awareness, and domains of legacy and leisure. Preliminary investigation reveals that mortality salience is positively correlated with both leisure and legacy drive. Further analysis of results will be presented at the conference.

Reminders of mortality weaken P2 amplitude underlying both self-reflection and mother-reflection

Recent research has repeatedly shown that people usually escape self-related thoughts to behaviorally buffer the anxiety elicited by death, and that reminders of mortality influence the brain activations related to self-related thoughts. Meanwhile, neuroimaging studies have suggested an overlapped neural representation of self and intimate others (e.g., mother) in Chinese individuals. However, whether mortality salience (MS) influences the neural processing of both self and mother in Chinese individuals has not been examined. Therefore, the current study recorded the event-related potentials in response to self-reflection and mother-reflection after MS priming. Our results showed that relative to neutral priming, MS priming significantly decreased the peak of P2 in response to both self-related and mother-related traits. Our work suggested a similar neural mechanism of the avoidance of both self-focus and mother-focus after being reminded of mortality.

Exploitation of mortality salience in communication on climate change

This research focuses on the effectiveness of anxiety-inducing communication for mobilizing consumers against climate change. Based on terror management theory (TMT), we show that this register can be counterproductive in generating consumer choices that run counter to pro-environmental logics. In particular, we report the results of an experiment ( N = 132) testing the influence of the type of communication (anxiogenic vs informative) on consumer choices (pro-materialistic vs pro-environmental). The results reveal that people’s consumption choices depend on their cultural worldviews (i.e. materialistic vs environmentalist) and the type of communication used. The effectiveness of communication strategies on climate change is then discussed in terms of people’s cultural worldview.

Empathy Diminishes Prejudice: Active Perspective-Taking, Regardless of Target and Mortality Salience, Decreases Implicit Racial Bias

Racism, and particularly the oppression of Black citizens, remains a significant problem in the United States. This manuscript reports on an experiment studying the effects of mortality salience and active perspective-taking empathy on racial bias. Specifically, social empathy was hypothesized to counteract the increased in-group preferential bias typical of those primed with mortality salience. The sample consisted of n = 111 White emerging adults affiliated with a small Midwest American university. Death anxiety and active perspective-taking were experimentally manipulated, and the dependent variables were implicit bias change scores (pre-test versus post-test on the Race-Related Implicit Association Test using White/Black faces) and explicit racial prejudice (self-report scores on the Quick Discrimination Inventory and Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy). The four experimental groups did not differ on implicit bias change scores or explicit discrimination scores—neither main effects nor interaction effects were statistically significant. However, the QDI and SEE were correlated (r = .76, p > .001), thus supporting their construct validity, and the pre-scores on the Race IAT across the whole sample were statistically significantly higher than the post-scores, with a moderate effect size (t(110) = 3.13, p = .002, eta-squared = .08). Findings appear to indicate that engaging in active perspective-taking, regardless of the race of the target and regardless of the presence of mortality salience, leads to decreased implicit racial prejudice. Empathy training in various clinical and educational settings could lead to a reduction in prejudiced attitudes, and ultimately aid in the dismantling of American racism.

Self-affirmation attenuates death-thought accessibility after mortality salience, but not among a high post-traumatic stress sample.

According to anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT), people function effectively in the world, in part, by relying on anxiety-buffer systems to protect against death awareness; however, traumatic experiences can overwhelm and disrupt those anxiety-buffer systems, leaving people unprotected from death awareness and at increased risk for the major symptom clusters of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Based on that idea, it was hypothesized that (a) when posttraumatic stress symptoms are low, self-affirmation (a known worldview/self-esteem based anxiety-buffer) should prevent mortality reminders from causing increased death-thought accessibility (DTA); but that (b) when posttraumatic stress symptoms are high (indicating anxiety-buffer disruption), self-affirmation should fail to prevent mortality reminders from increasing DTA. To test these hypotheses, participants identified in a general population prescreen assessment as "low posttraumatic-stress symptom" (n = 222) and "high posttraumatic-stress symptom" (n = 210) were reminded of death (vs. control topic), prompted to engage in a self-affirmation (vs. nonself-affirmation) task, and then asked to complete a standard assessment of death-thought accessibility (DTA). The hypotheses were confirmed, revealing that posttraumatic stress symptoms were associated with the ineffectiveness of anxiety-buffer system in protecting against increased death awareness. The present findings support of a foundational concept of ABDT, and point to new insights about the nature of PTSD and its treatment, because failure to manage death awareness is known to cause anxiety and exacerbate anxiety-related disorders (e.g., PTSD). (PsycINFO Database Record

Evoked Death-Related Thoughts in the Aftermath of Terror Attack: The Associations Between Mortality Salience Effect and Adjustment Disorder.

ICD-11 has provided a revised definition for adjustment disorder (AjD). The current study examined whether mortality salience effect, a possible consequence of a terror attack, may serve as a significant predictor associated with each of the AjD subscales. Using an online survey, 379 adult participants were recruited and filled out self-reported questionnaires dealing with adjustment disorder symptoms as well as mortality salience effect. Findings revealed that mortality salience effect was a significant predictor of all AjD subscales. The importance of mortality salience effect for AjD is discussed in light of terror management theory.

『청정도론』을 통해 본 죽음 현저성이 심리에 미치는 영향 연구

『청정도론』을 통해 본 죽음 현저성이 심리에 미치는 영향 연구

DEFENSE MECHANISM AGAINST MORTALITY SALIENCE IN TURKISH MUSLIM POPULATION

People who live in Turkey have experienced terrorist attacks for more than thirty years. In the past, the goals of the terrorist organizations were to frighten innocent civilians, but modern attacks are much more malevolent, and they have turned into indiscriminate massacres. In recent years, terrorist organizations have attacked big cities and the general population feels that terrorism is no longer a regional problem and anyone could be in danger. People who live in Ankara tried to cope with the truth `anyone can be a victim of successive terrorist attacks in 2016’. People`s reactions were very different from each other. Some of them stopped using the subway and some realized the importance of their lives. Naturally, attacks affect social, economic, psychological, and religious life in Turkey. The objective of this study is to determine defense mechanisms against fear of death after terrorist attacks. Therefore, this study used a phenomenological approach as a method of qualitative research. This way, the researchers tried to understand Muslim Turkish population tendencies considering its authenticity. This study applied open-ended questions in a semi-structured interview form on a sample of N = 26 selected by purposive sampling that lived in Ankara during June 2016. The ages of the participants in the sample’s ranged from 18 to 50 and the mean age was 37.5. The group consisted of 15 female and 11 male participants. In this study, the researchers determined four different defense mechanisms that are in the Muslim Turkish population. These defense mechanisms were religious-active, religious-passive, non-religious-passive, and non-religious active (Figure 1). As a result, the researchers realized that neither classical Islamic philosophers’ destiny/qadar approaches nor modern psychologists’ fatalism approach could describe the Muslim Turkish population’s defense mechanism against mortality salience. Therefore, this authentic sample needed authentic measures and concepts.

The Interaction of Extremist Propaganda and Anger as Predictors of Violent Responses.

In this study, and with a view to extending upon existing findings on the effects of general violent media on violent cognitions, we experimentally measured the relationship between exposure to extremist propaganda and violent cognitions. Our results countered our hypotheses and the wider findings of violent media and aggression that exposure to violent stimuli increases violent thoughts and that this effect is moderated by trait aggression. Specifically, this study found that participants with low and medium trait aggression became more pro-social after being exposed to extremist propaganda. We discuss these results with reference to theories of terror management and mortality salience, as well as the implications of these results for wider theories of the role of online extremist material in the wider "radicalization" process.

Evidence of mortality salience and psychological defenses in bottled water campaigns

ABSTRACTEnvironmental campaigns provide information to encourage people to alter their behaviors but with mixed success. Terror Management Theory (TMT)—and the influence of mortality reminders—offers a useful framework for understanding environmentally significant behaviors, and provides critical insights for developing more effective environmental communications. TMT indicators guided our analysis of Canadian corporate, pro-bottled water advertising, and public, anti-bottled water campaigns. We found that pro-bottled water advertisements had a greater capacity to manage death anxieties because they better support the audiences' self-esteem, provide the audience with opportunities to engage in worldview defense, and symbolically extend the consumers' perceived lifespan.

Romantic love versus reproduction opportunities: Disentangling the contributions of different anxiety buffers under conditions of existential threat

AbstractRomantic relationships and offspring are discussed as anxiety buffers in terror management processes. We examined the relationship between these possible buffers and tested whether romantic relationships reduce existential threat due to reproduction opportunities or if they represent a distinct anxiety buffer. Contrary to our initial expectations, thinking about a positive romantic relationship without (vs. with) own children increased partner affect (Study 1) and commitment (Study 2) and decreased punishment intentions (Study 2) after mortality salience. These effects were mediated by participants' desire for romantic love. Furthermore, thinking about positive nonparental (vs. parental) romantic relationships lowered death‐thought accessibility (Study 3). Together, these findings suggest that romantic relationships form a distinct anxiety buffer that is only effective when the cultural (romance) instead of the biological (having children) nature of the relationship is highlighted. We discuss the role of anxiety buffer salience for determining whether offspring concerns buffer or increase existential threat.

Characteristics of Heroic Brands and Their Effects on Threatened Consumers

The concept of heroism has received the attention of researchers for the psychological benefits that heroes have on individuals. This paper extends the concept of heroism to branding, conceptualizes the heroic brand archetype, and investigates its effects on consumers. We study how marketers can use the heroic brand archetype to affect consumers’ perceptions of brands and to mitigate mortality threats. Specifically, we examine the characteristics of the heroic brand archetype, we demonstrate that individuals prefer heroic brands to non-heroic brands when they are threatened (vs. not threatened) with mortality salience, and we suggest that the motivational orientation of consumers influences the evaluation of heroic brands when they are threatened (vs. not threatened). With our proposed results, we contribute to the literature on branding, heroism, and the meaning maintenance model (MMM).

You're Hired! Mortality Salience Increases Americans’ Support for Donald Trump

AbstractSupport for presidential candidate Donald Trump increased in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and San Bernardino, California, similar to Americans’ greater enthusiasm for President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. According to terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski), people are prone to embrace charismatic politicians in times of historical upheaval to mitigate existential terror. Consistent with this view, previous research has demonstrated that reminders of death (relative to an aversive control condition) increased support for a charismatic leader in a hypothetical gubernatorial election, and support for President Bush and his policies in Iraq prior to the 2004 presidential election. The present Study 1 hypothesized and found that a death reminder increased support for Donald Trump. Study 2 found that while Hillary Clinton was viewed more favorably than Donald Trump in an aversive control condition, Mr. Trump was viewed more favorably in response to a death reminder while impressions of Mrs. Clinton were unaffected. Study 3 demonstrated that asking people to think about immigrants moving into their neighborhood increased the accessibility of implicit death thoughts. These findings suggest that electoral outcomes and public policy can be affected when existential concerns are aroused.

The Impact of Topic Characteristics and Threat on Willingness to Engage with Wikipedia Articles: Insights from Laboratory Experiments.

A growing body of research aims to identify the factors that motivate people to make contributions in Wikipedia. We conducted two laboratory experiments to investigate the connections between topic characteristics, perception of threat, and willingness to engage with Wikipedia articles. In Study 1 (N = 83), we examined how topic familiarity, topic controversiality, and mortality salience influenced participants’ willingness to engage with Wikipedia articles. We presented the introduction parts of 20 Wikipedia articles and asked participants to rate each article with respect to familiarity and controversiality. In addition, we experimentally manipulated participants’ level of mortality salience in terms of the amount of threat they experienced when reading the article. Participants also indicated their willingness to engage with a particular article. The results revealed that familiar and controversial topics increased the willingness to engage with Wikipedia articles. Although mortality salience increased accessibility of death-related thoughts, it did not result in any changes in people’s willingness to work with the articles. The aim of Study 2 (N = 90) was to replicate the effects of topic characteristics by following a similar procedure. We additionally manipulated uncertainty salience by assigning participants to three experimental conditions: uncertainty salience, certainty salience, and non-salience. As expected, familiar and controversial topics were of high interest in terms of willingness to contribute. However, the manipulation of uncertainty salience did not yield any significant results despite the emergence of negative emotional states. In sum, we demonstrated that topic characteristics were factors that substantially influenced people’s willingness to engage with Wikipedia articles whereas perceived threat was not.

Unintended effects of measuring implicit processes: The case of death-thought accessibility in mortality salience studies

According to terror management theory, mortality salience (MS) increases distal worldview and self-esteem defensiveness by arousing unconscious death-thought accessibility (DTA). Although numerous studies support this theoretical process model, no research to date has ever found that DTA mediates the effect of MS in a single study, using the measurement-of-mediation approach. In this paper, we argue that the lack of evidence for this effect is due to methodological issues associated with the measurement of DTA. Specifically, measuring DTA primes death-thoughts and thereby disrupts the psychological processes that are typically initiated by MS. We provide evidence for this theorizing in three studies. Study 1 shows that merely administering a DTA task (vs. a neutral non-death-related task) increases distal self-esteem enhancement following a delay period (cf., a typical MS effect). Study 2 is a preregistered replication of Study 1, and found parallel effects, but only among participants who did not speed through the study. Study 3 demonstrates that whereas MS increases self-enhancement after a delay when DTA is not measured, administering a DTA task following MS eliminates this effect. Implications for understanding the implicit processes initiated in response to MS are discussed, and methodological recommendations for conducting empirically sound MS studies are suggested.