Mortality Salience Research Articles

Mortality management and climate action: A review and reference for using Terror Management Theory methods in interdisciplinary environmental research

AbstractGlobal climate change awareness is increasing, but efforts to convey information can trigger undesirable behaviors, including denial, skepticism, and increased resource consumption. It is therefore essential to more fully investigate social–psychological responses to climate information and messaging if we are to prompt, support, and sustain pro‐environmental behaviors. Yet consideration of these responses is typically absent from interdisciplinary environmental study designs. Of specific relevance is research using social psychology's Terror Management Theory (TMT) showing that people's efforts to repress mortality salience (MS) or awareness significantly influence their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Research on MS's influence on climate change beliefs is progressing but, to date, a systematic scoping review of the literature has been unavailable. Here, we provide such a review. We propose that TMT insights and methods should be better integrated into research designs to guide climate communications and to generate the comprehensive cultural and behavioral changes needed to address societies' climate problems. We introduce a methodological framework for interdisciplinary researchers to incorporate TMT into their research designs and to help practitioners anticipate how their mortality‐laden messaging could trigger unintentional social‐psychological responses that degrade climate communication strategies.This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Behavior Change and Responses

Humanoid versus non-humanoid robots: How mortality salience shapes preference for robot services under the COVID-19 pandemic?

This paper examines the influence of mortality salience on preference for humanoid robot service. Six studies confirm that consumers/tourists are reluctant to adopt humanoid (vs. non-humanoid) service robots and robotic services when mortality is salient. The effect is driven by the perceived threat to human identity. However, temporal distance can alleviate the mortality salience effect. Eliciting a distant-future temporal perspective can reduce consumers'/tourists' existential anxiety, and then attenuate negative reactions to humanoid service robots. This research provides an innovative standpoint on consumers' reactions to service robots under conditions of mortality salience (e.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic). It also offers insight into service robot implementation and design in the hospitality and tourism industry.

The Terror Management Function of Descendent Continuity: Evidence That Descendent Continuity Acts as a Distal and Proximal Defense.

Previous researches showed that offspring can function as a distal defense, we presented seven studies to further explore the role of offspring in terror management for Chinese people based on their unique fertility culture. Both Studies 1a and 1b found that mortality salience increased desire for children. Study 2 showed that offspring salience reduced the effect of mortality salience on social transgressions judgments. Study 3 revealed that disruption of procreation strivings increased death-thought accessibility. Study 4 demonstrated that conscious responses to worldview threats overwhelmed the unconscious compensation effect of worldview threats on desire for children. Study 5a and Study 5b found that offspring salience decreased death anxiety for parents and nonparents. Taken together, these findings expand terror management theory, emphasizing descendent continuity not only as a related yet separate distal defense from the cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and close relationship but also as a proximal defense, especially for Chinese.

Spirituality and Children\u2019s Coping with Representation of Death During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Qualitative Research with Parents

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the related lockdown measures have had intense negative impacts on the psychological well-being of both adults and children. Among such impacts is a significant increase in mortality salience and changes in how people deal with grief and losses. This qualitative research used semi-structured interviews with 23 Italian parents to draw insights on the impact of the pandemic on children aged 5˗15 years with regard to their representation of death and the eventual role that family spirituality/ religiosity played in helping them understand both the concept of dying and possibly the pandemic itself. From the data analysis, four main thematic areas emerged: “Lockdown experience,” “Fears and worries related to COVID-19,” “Emergence of thoughts on the process of dying,” and “Representation of death and the impact of religious beliefs.” The participants highlighted how stressful the lockdown measures have been for their children and the anxiety that their children have experienced because of fears related to the pandemic. The interviews also surfaced how living in a religious family has contributed significantly to shaping children’s representation and understanding of death and sometimes even helped both the parents and their children to face difficult moments such as those caused by the pandemic.

Touched by Tragedy

Abstract. Humans avoid thinking about death, yet they often watch tragic movies in which the main characters die. Seeking to explain this paradox, this research assessed conditions that motivate narrative processing of tragic movies about the loss of a loved one. Participants were assigned to a 3 (Mortality Salience of Self vs. Loved One vs. Control) × 2 (Movie Ending: Meaningful vs. Open) factorial design ( N = 187), and then completed measures of death-thought accessibility, mixed affect, boundary expansion, and identification. The two different mortality salience conditions increased death-thought accessibility in the same way. However, only mortality salience of a loved one increased mixed affect for movies with meaningful endings, which, in turn, predicted identification with the protagonist and boundary expansion into the story world. The findings suggest that movies about loss with meaningful endings may invite viewers to emotionally process the fundamental fear of losing a loved one.

Mortality salience enhances neural activities related to guilt and shame when recalling the past.

Mortality salience (MS) influences cognition and behavior. However, its effect on emotion (especially moral emotions) and the underlying neural correlates are unclear. We investigated how MS priming modulated guilt and shame in a later recall task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The behavioral results indicated that MS increased self-reported guilt but not shame. The neural results showed that MS strengthened neural activities related to the psychological processes of guilt and shame. Specifically, for both guilt and shame, MS increased activation in a region associated with self-referential processing (ventral medial prefrontal cortex). For guilt but not shame, MS increased the activation of regions associated with cognitive control (orbitofrontal cortex) and emotion processing (amygdala). For shame but not guilt, MS decreased brain functional connectivity related to self-referential processing. A direct comparison showed that MS more strongly decreased a functional connectivity related to self-referential processing in the shame than in the guilt condition. Additionally, the activation of insula during MS priming was partly predictive of neural activities related to guilt and shame in the subsequent recall task. Our study sheds light on the psychological and neural mechanisms of MS effects on moral emotions and provides theoretical insights for enriching terror management theory.

Mortality salience effects fail to replicate in traditional and novel measures

Mortality salience (MS) effects, where death reminders lead to ingroup-bias and defensive protection of one’s world-view, have been claimed to be a fundamental human motivator. MS phenomena have ostensibly been identified in several hundred studies within the “terror management theory” framework, but transparent and high-powered replications are lacking. Experiment 1 (N = 101 Norwegian lab participants) aimed to replicate the traditional MSeffect on national patriotism, with additional novel measures of democratic values and pro-sociality. Experiment2 (N = 784 US online participants) aimed to replicate the MS effect on national patriotism in a larger sample, with ingroup identification and pro-sociality as additional outcome measures. The results showed that neither experiment replicated the traditional MS effect on national patriotism. The experiments also failed to support conceptual replications and underlying mechanisms on democratic values, processing speed, psychophysiological responses, ingroup identification, and pro-sociality. This indicates that the effect of death reminders is less robust and generalizable than previously assumed.

Fear Appeals in Anti-Knife Carrying Campaigns: Successful or Counter-Productive?

In the UK, knife crime continues to be a persistent and worrying concern. Media campaigns are often used by police and anti-knife crime organisations in an attempt to discourage young people from picking up a weapon. Many focus on the potentially devastating consequences associated with carrying a weapon, with the aim of provoking fear and thus a deterrent effect. In this paper, we present the findings from two experimental studies exploring the effects of exposure to fear-based knife crime media campaigns on young people's intentions to engage in knife-carrying behaviour. Utilising a terror management theory perspective, in both studies we found that exposure to knife-related campaign imagery increased mortality salience, but there was no effect of campaign condition on willingness to carry a knife or on perceived benefits of knife-carrying. Although knife-related self-esteem/cultural worldviews predicted attitudes towards knife-carrying, such views did not moderate the effect of exposure to knife-related campaign imagery, and there was no effect of priming participants' to consider the value of behaving responsibly. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The Underlying Process of Prosocial Behavior Among Soldiers: A Terror Management Theory Perspective

The mortality salience (MS) hypothesis postulates that anxiety elicited by mortality awareness leads people to develop negative emotions toward those who hold values inconsistent with their worldview faith. We explored this hypothesis in a sample of 76 Israeli combat soldiers, who were asked to reflect on either their mortality or dental pain. Subsequently, participants reported their motivation to help a father in need who was either an Arab (outgroup) or a Jewish Israeli (ingroup), as well as their perceptions of threat by Arab Israelis. Regression analysis indicated that mortality reminders intensified soldiers’ perception of threat by the outgroup, leading to an increased desire to assist a Jewish-Israeli father, and a decreased motivation to help an Arab-Israeli one. The findings demonstrate the pronounced effects of MS on soldiers involved in frequent combat actions in terms of evoking negative emotions leading to reluctance to help unarmed civilian outgroup members. Recommendations for soldiers’ pre-deployment psychoeducation sessions are provided.

Mortality Salience's Effects on Consumers’ Responses to Advertising During a Global Public Health Crisis

Mortality Salience's Effects on Consumers’ Responses to Advertising During a Global Public Health Crisis

Testing terror management theory in advanced cancer

Death anxiety is common in advanced cancer due to heightened mortality salience. We tested terror management theory (TMT) in this population (N = 305) by evaluating the buffering effect of the distal defenses (attachment security, meaning, self-esteem) on the impact of physical impairment (a proxy for mortality salience) on death anxiety. Patients with greater numbers of strong distal defenses reported lower death anxiety than those with no strong defenses or one strong defense. These findings support the relevance of TMT in individuals facing the actual threat of death and the need for further TMT research in such populations.

The Impact of Mortality Salience on Purchase Intention and Creativity Evaluation on Products During COVID-19 Pandemic.

In the environment of COVID-19, people are faced with mortality salience (MS) and socioeconomic crisis. According to the terror management theory, the MS would lead to particular consumption attitudes and behaviors caused by the self-esteem and cultural worldview defense. The creativity as a potential value of products needs to be examined to explore how the MS changed the creativity evaluation of three types of products categorized into normal, renovative, and innovative products, based on the degree of originality (Zhang et al., 2019). Two experiments were conducted to examine (1) the MS effect on the creativity and purchase intention evaluation and (2) both MS and country-of-origin effect on the evaluations. The results show that usefulness and purchase intention are affected by both effects, and the novelty is mainly affected by MS.

The effect of mortality salience on status consumption among elderly individuals: the moderating role of chronological age and subjective age

PurposeOver the past two decades, a large body of research has examined the effect of the awareness of the inevitability of death on consumption behaviours. However, the literature has shed little light on the effect of mortality salience (MS) on elderly individuals. The present research specifically aims to challenge the effect of MS on status consumption among elderly individuals.Design/methodology/approachTwo experiments were conducted among individuals over 50. The experiments manipulated MS to test its effect on status consumption.FindingsThe results demonstrate that MS positively influences the preference for status products among elderly individuals (experiment 1) and that this effect is less pronounced as elderly individuals age (experiment 2). Subjective age bias, defined as the potential gap between chronological age and subjective age, negatively moderates this effect (experiment 2).Practical implicationsLuxury marketers need to pay attention to generational cohorts rather than other demographic variables in the segmentation of their market. Moreover, subjective age may be a better segmentation variable for marketers than objective variables such as chronological age.Originality/valueThis research provides insights that support a better understanding of status consumption among elderly individuals and the role of subjective ageing in this process.

Exploring Mortality Salience and Pandemic Impact in the Context of COVID-19.

Mortality salience refers to a state of conscious awareness of death and the inevitable conclusion of life, associated with psychological terror. The COVID-19 pandemic generated increased awareness of illness and death, and effectuated changes in death cognitions and people's experiences around psychological or sociocognitive domains of media and life goals. To understand these changes, this study administered the Multidimensional Mortality Awareness Measure (Levasseur et al., 2015) to 103 emerging adults in India, post which 6 participants proceeded for a semi-structured interview exploring pandemic experiences, news consumption and goal prioritization, to examine specific areas in relation to death cognition. The thematic analysis demonstrates psychological effects, and discusses developments in health and death-related psychological processes. Focus on career goals and health maintenance, cautious news consumption and disadvantageous impacts on mental health are seen, significant in navigating healthcare measures for emerging adults, as we move forward into this 'new normal'.

Effectiveness of Attention Control Training on Attentional Bias Towards Death, Death Anxiety, and Sensitivity to Mortality Salience

Background and Aim: Attention Control Training is a new cognitive intervention that improves emotion regulation by reducing attentional bias towards negative information. Given the significant association between death anxiety and emotion dysregulation and death-related attentional bias, this study aimed to assess attention control training as an intervention for reducing death anxiety. Methods & Materials: In this clinical trial, the Convenience Sampling Method sampled 50 university students in Tehran and was randomly assigned to 2 experimental and 1 control groups. Attention control training was delivered using death-related stimuli for the 1st experimental group and negative stimuli unrelated to death for the 2nd experimental group. The control group didn’t receive any interventions. In 3 measurements of pretest, posttest, and 3 months follow-up, death-related attentional bias, death anxiety, and sensitivity to mortality salience were assessed, respectively, using the Modified Stroop Test, Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS), and Propensity to Moral Disengagement Scale (PMDS) after inducing Mortality Salience condition. Ethical Considerations: This study was registered at the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (Code: IRCT20190406043181N1) and was approved by the research ethics committee of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (Code: IR.SBMU.MSP.REC.1398.539). Results: The study showed that after completing attention control training, the 1st experimental group’s death-related attentional bias, death anxiety, and sensitivity to mortality salience were significantly reduced (P<0.05), and this reduction was maintained at 3 months of follow-up. No significant changes were observed in the other two groups (P>0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that attention control training is capable of significantly reducing death-related attentional bias, and this reduction in attentional bias leads to decreased death anxiety and sensitivity to mortality salience

How death anxiety influences coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic: investigating the role of spirituality, national identity, lockdown and trust

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has created a highly stressful environment in which reminders of death are constant. This context of permanent mortality salience is likely to arouse death anxiety in individuals around the world that they must manage. This study investigates the effects of death anxiety on the adoption of different coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic in five different countries (N = 721, mean age = 32.83). The results show that higher levels of death anxiety mainly lead to the adoption of avoidance coping strategies and that spirituality and national identity moderate this effect, whereas lockdown does not. Moreover, trust in institutions is a mediator in the relationship between death anxiety and avoidance strategies.

Neuroticism, cancer mortality salience, and physician avoidance in cancer survivors: Proximity of treatment matters.

To examine if the relationship between neuroticism and physician avoidance/physician visit concerns are mediated by perceptions that cancer is associated with death ("cancer mortality salience"; CMS) for cancer survivors to inform public health interventions and tailored health communications. Cancer survivors comprised 42.3% of the total sample (n=525). Participants completed a 4-item neuroticism scale, 4-item cancer perceptions scale, and 4-item physician avoidance and concerns scale. Multiple linear regression models were used to assess relationships among variables for cancer survivors and separately for those without a history of cancer. Neuroticism was positively associated with CMS for cancer survivors, b=0.26, (p<0.001), and those without cancer, b=0.22, (p<0.001). There was an association between neuroticism and physician avoidance among cancer survivors with temporally distant treatment courses after controlling for CMS, b=0.56 (p=0.006), but not for those currently or recently having had undergone treatment (p=0.949). There was also an indirect relationship between neuroticism and physician visit concerns that was mediated by CMS for cancer survivors, b=0.07, CI=[0.03, 0.13], but this relationship was again driven by cancer survivors with more distal treatment courses. High neuroticism in cancer survivors is associated with physician avoidance and physician visit concerns when treatment is temporally distant. Interventions aimed at decoupling the association between cancer and death can help increase the willingness of cancer survivors to attain cancer care follow-ups and healthcare more generally.

The effect of COVID-19-induced mortality salience on delay discounting: a replication

This study is a conceptual replication of Kelley & Schmeichel (PLOS ONE 10: e0144228, 2015), which found that thinking about death reduces delay discounting. Unlike the original study, the current study was conducted in an environment where there was a real and tangible mortality threat across the world, that is, COVID-19. Contrary to the findings of the original study, results of the current study revealed that thinking about death increases delay discounting, such that participants who were primed with death thoughts traded “₺200 now” for “₺342.35 three months later,” whereas those in the control condition traded “₺200 now” for “₺319.27 three months later”. The current study also explored the moderating roles of goal orientation and self-esteem in the effect of mortality salience on delay discounting; however, it failed to provide evidence for the moderating roles of these variables.

How healthcare workers respond to COVID-19: The role of vulnerability and social support in a close relationships defense mechanism

Healthcare workers play a vital role in the fight against COVID-19. Based on Terror Management Theory (TMT), the present research examined whether a close relationships defense mechanism reduces anxiety among healthcare workers (N = 729) in China. Our results suggest that this defense mechanism, as indexed by relationship satisfaction, serves as an effective terror management source after exposure to reminders of death (MS; mortality salience). These findings extend TMT by identifying two moderating variables: vulnerability and social support. In a low objective vulnerability group, healthcare workers who subjectively believed themselves as less vulnerable to COVID-19 showed a stronger defense mechanism after a MS manipulation as compared to those who felt more vulnerable. Further, healthcare workers with higher levels of social support reported more relationship satisfaction. These findings have practical implications for guiding healthcare workers on how to buffer death-related anxiety and maintain their mental health in the fight against COVID-19.

What makes consumers willing to pay for carbon taxes–A view of terror management theory

The growing exasperating effect of climate change calls for an immensely augmented decline of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in all aspects of human life. Marketers have increasingly employed different strategies in attempt to change consumer behavior having a pivotal role in diminishing CO 2 emissions. Yet, little work has been done to investigate the influencing factors that can develop sustainable consumption patterns. Drawing on Terror Management Theory (TMT), this research attempts to explore the relationships between omnipresent fear of death and consumers’ willingness to pay for carbon emissions. The results demonstrate that mortality salience is positively associated with materialism whereas self-esteem tends to decrease it. The results further indicate that, these two research precursors positively influence consumers’ health consciousness; materialism and health consciousness lower and positively influence consumers’ willingness to pay extra to offset carbon emissions, respectively. This study advances our knowledge regarding the willingness of consumers to pay for carbon offsets and strengthens the literature on climate change response by providing empirical evidence of the effects of various psychological factors. On the basis of these findings, this study also provides key managerial instructions for the carbon offset program. Fear of death is critically important because it can greatly affect consumers’ willingness to pay for carbon taxes, so managers should foster consumers’ self-esteem yet offering material bonuses to airline passengers, on the contrary, might not have a desired effect on sustainable behavior.