Worldview Defense Research Articles

A Review of Research on the Role of Different Types of Religiosity in Terror Management

This review paper aims to reveal the role of different types of religiosity based on research addressing religiosity in terms of in-group and out-group distinction within the scope of Terror Management Theory (TMT). Studies point out two important results of the phenomenon: the first is the fact that general religiosity focusing on only one aspect of religiosity (religious belongingness, afterlife belief, etc.) to measure religiosity increases worldview defense, supporting the hypothesis of mortality salience. The second is the fact that different religious orientations (intrinsic, fundamentalist, etc.) cause various reactions, depending on their unique characteristics when mortality is salient. In the current study, possible reasons for the differences between research findings are discussed. In order to clarify the roles that different types of religiosity play in terror management, a classification based on the strong-flexible and exclusive-inclusive poles of the “belief” and “belonging” dimensions suggested by Sarouglu has been proposed. It has been argued that religiosity types would function in terror management in different ways, depending on the classification in which they are placed. For example, when the religious worldview is threatened, the strong-exclusive pattern (e.g., religious fundamentalism) can lead to more negative reactions, while the strong-inclusive pattern (e.g., intrinsic religiosity) can be associated with positive processes in inter-group relationships. Future research on this classification and types of religiosity can provide unique contributions to developing TMT. On the other hand, knowing the roles of different forms of religiosity in managing existential concerns may be of therapeutic benefit in coping with death, bereavement, grief and related processes.

Health consequences of a death threat: How terrorist attacks impact drinking

AbstractTerrorist attacks, war, violent acts, and their media coverage remind us of our own mortality, which may provoke stress and coping mechanisms. The terror management health model (TMHM) proposes that even subliminal thoughts about existential threats trigger worldview defense and self‐esteem‐related behaviors. Based on the TMHM, our field experiment (N = 228) examines the impact of a terrorist attack on death‐thought accessibility, the choice between alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, and if the impact on this choice is moderated by the importance of alcohol to one's self‐esteem (i.e., alcohol‐based self‐esteem), and the consciousness of the terrorist attack. Results show that thoughts about the terrorist attack increased death‐thought accessibility. The salience of the terrorist attack had no main effect on beverage choice, but alcohol‐based self‐esteem predicted choosing an alcoholic beverage. However, in the unconscious thought condition, participants who had low alcohol‐based self‐esteem and were provoked with death‐related thoughts about terrorism were more likely to choose an alcoholic beverage. In the conscious thought condition, participants who had high alcohol‐based self‐esteem were less likely to choose alcohol. This study suggests that thoughts about terrorism and, therefore, the threat of death, can be provoked in everyday situations and affect substance use behaviors with potentially adverse health consequences.

Multiple existential threats and attitudes towards Muslims in Finland and Italy during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractWe are currently living in a time of several existential threats: the global pandemic COVID‐19, climate change, and the ‘refugee crisis’ caused by violent conflicts and humanitarian catastrophes in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. These threats do not only affect our well‐being but also our sense of control and security, as well as identities and worldviews having also intergroup consequences. In this study, we investigated the links between perceived existential threats (i.e. COVID‐19, climate change, and refugee crisis in 2015 that multiplied Muslim population in Europe), national and religious identities, and attitudes towards Muslims (i.e. Muslim refugees, Muslim minority, and Muslim converts) among Christian national majority group members in Finland and Italy in 2020. The results were analysed with multigroup structural equation modelling, and they demonstrated some key differences between how threats perceived from climate change and the refugee crisis in 2015 are translated into the reactions towards Muslims. While threats associated with the refugee crisis were detrimental to outgroup attitudes, climate change threats elicited more positive attitudes towards the outgroups studied. Our preliminary analyses suggested that COVID‐19, in turn, seems to elicit feelings of worldview defence through higher levels of national identification with no negative attitudinal ramifications. While Abrahamic identity as a believer was directly associated with more positive attitudes towards Muslims in Italy, it did not account for the link between existential threats and outgroup attitudes. The results are discussed in light of how different threats increase or decrease intergroup harmony.

Social-coalitional trait is related to coping capacity with mortality threat: association with leadership and a reduced parietal response to mortality salience.

Coping with mortality threat, a psychological threat unique to humans and distinct from general emotional distress, is traditionally characterized by immediate suppression and prolonged worldview defense within the framework of the influential terror management theory (TMT). Views regarding the personality-trait concepts for this coping capacity diverge: some favor a broad definition based on general psychological attitudes (e.g., hardiness), while others prefer a narrow definition linked to interpersonal attitudes related to social coalition (e.g., attachment style and self-transcendence). Using functional MRI, we presented healthy older participants with death-related words and explored correlations between the neural responses to mortality threat and the factor scores of the Power to Live questionnaire, which measures eight resilience-related psychobehavioral traits. We observed a significant association between the factor score and a neural response only for leadership; individuals with a high leadership score exhibited reduced neural response to mortality salience in the right inferior parietal lobule. Within the TMT framework, our findings align with the concept of the immediate suppression of death-thought accessibility associated with a secure attachment style, a trait conceptually linked to leadership. These findings highlight the unique role for the narrowly defined social-coalitional trait during the immediate stage of the coping process with mortality salience, in contrast to the broadly defined resilience-related personality traits associated with a prolonged worldview defense process. The deterioration of this coping process could constitute a distinct aspect of psychopathology, separate from dysfunction in general emotion regulation.

No significant effect of mortality salience on unconscious ethnic bias among the Japanese

ObjectiveTerror management theory posits that when mortality is salient, individuals attempt to defend their cultural worldviews. Although numerous studies have confirmed this hypothesis, some recent studies have suggested that East Asians do not engage in worldview defense. We conducted a pre-registered experiment with 895 Japanese adults to investigate whether they exhibited worldview defense at an unconscious level. Participants performed the Implicit Association Test using Japanese and Korean surnames as stimuli after being primed with thoughts about mortality.ResultsThe results revealed that mortality salience had no influence on implicit ethnic bias. These findings support the notion that East Asians do not engage in worldview defense, in accord with recent criticism of the validity of terror management theory. We discuss the limitations and implications of our findings.

Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of Terror Management Theory.

Terror Management Theory (TMT) postulates that humans, in response to awareness of their death, developed complex defenses to remove the salience and discomfort stemming from those thoughts. In a standard paradigm to test this theory, an individual is presented with a death-related prime (Mortality Salience; MS), such as writing the details of their own death, or something neutral, such as watching television. After a distractor task (for delay), participants complete the dependent variable, such as rating how much they like or agree with a pro- or anti-national essay and its author. Individuals in the MS condition typically exhibit greater worldview defense than control conditions by rating the pro-national essay more positively and the anti-national essay more negatively. We completed five separate studies across five unique samples with the goal of replicating and extending this well-established pattern to provide further understanding of the phenomena that underlie the effects of MS. However, despite using standard procedures, we were unable to replicate basic patterns of the dependent variable in the MS conditions. We also pooled all responses into two meta-analyses, one examining all dependent variables and one focusing on the anti-national essay; yet the effect sizes in these analyses did not significantly differ from zero. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of these (unintended) failures to replicate. It is not clear if these null findings were due to methodological limitations, restraints of online/crowd-sourced recruitment, or ever-evolving sociocultural factors.

Worldview defence and self‐determination theory explain the return of racial voting: Evidence from the 2016 US election

AbstractWe use self‐determination (SDT) and worldview defence theories (WDT) to explicate the psychological roots of identitarian voting in recent US, UK and EU elections. We test our theory using the 2016 US election as a case study, data from a representative sample of nearly half a million Americans, and a measure of racial animus derived from Google search data. We find that worry has a strong and significant positive association with Trump's vote share, as predicted by WDT. However, this is reversed in counties with high levels of relatedness—one of the three basic psychological needs emphasised by SDT. The positive relationship between racial animus and Trump also loses significance once an interaction between racial animus and relatedness is introduced. These results imply that identitarianism is driven at least in part by a desire for in‐group affiliation emerging out of worldview defence and unmet basic psychological needs.

Existential threat and responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup members.

The present research investigates how emotional displays shape reactions to ingroup and outgroup members when people are reminded of death. We hypothesized that under mortality salience, emotions that signal social distance promote worldview defense (i.e., increased ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation), whereas emotions that signal affiliation promote affiliation need (i.e., reduced ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation). In three studies, participants viewed emotional displays of ingroup and/or outgroup members after a mortality salience or control manipulation. Results revealed that under mortality salience, anger increased ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation (Study 1), enhanced perceived overlap with the ingroup (Study 3), and increased positive facial behavior to ingroup displays-measured via the Facial Action Coding System (Studies 1 and 2) and electromyography of the zygomaticus major muscle (Study 3). In contrast, happiness decreased ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation (Study 2), and increased positive facial behavior towards outgroup members (Study 3). The findings suggest that, in times of threat, emotional displays can determine whether people move away from unfamiliar others or try to form as many friendly relations as possible.

Climate change risk and terror management theory

Being intrinsically associated with death-related themes (e.g. decay, destruction, lack of control, chaos), communicating climate change risks may elicit thoughts in an audience about their own mortality – potentially invoking terror management responses. This study examined individual differences in death-thought accessibility (DTA) amongst Australian university students (N = 241) after exposure to information about climate change impacts, to predict climate change risk perceptions. It was posited that information about the impacts of climate change would lead to worldview defence (a terror management strategy) via increasing death-related thoughts. Although climate change salience did not invoke DTA, there was evidence that choosing not to complete word-fragments in a death-related manner reflected a high death-defensive response, rather than low-DTA. Compared with a control condition, climate change salience participants’ risk perceptions shifted liberally. The function of death-related thoughts depended on the individual’s climate change beliefs. Climate-deniers with high-DTA in the climate change salience condition showed greater risk perceptions compared to those with high-DTA in the control condition. Risk perceptions did not change as a function of DTA amongst climate-acceptors. A general implication was that climate change communications, may not produce counterproductive terror management outcomes as has been previously hypothesized. Rather they may motivate more realistic attitudes, such as perceiving climate change as high-risk, even amongst climate-deniers. From a policy perspective, to maximise acceptance, climate change information may benefit from being presented within frameworks that support individuals’ important personal worldviews.

Compensatory control in public emergencies

<p id="p00005">Public emergencies refer to social events that occur suddenly, cause, or may cause serious social harm and require emergency measures in dealing with them. Previous studies have focused on the psychological and behavioral responses of individuals during public emergencies. However, most of these studies have focused on describing psychological phenomena rather than exploring psychological mechanisms. Thus, the present article proposes that compensatory control theory can be used as a basic theoretical framework to understand a series of psychological and behavioral manifestations of individuals in the context of public emergencies. The core idea of this theory is that when individuals lack a sense of control, they tend to show a variety of reactions that have a common motivation; that is seeking structure. We analyzed the applicability of compensatory control theory to explain individuals’ psychological performance in the context of public emergencies from four perspectives. First, after major public emergencies occur, conspiracy theories on the cause of the event often follow. From the perspective of compensatory control theory, when individuals’ sense of control is threatened due to the occurrence of public emergencies, they tend to form conspiratorial thinking to some extent. Hence, they are eager to obtain a sense of order or structure to compensate. Since it is often difficult for authorities to immediately give a definitive answer about the cause of the incident, the conspiracy theory is often believed, which satisfies people’s search for causality and certainty. Second, during public emergencies, people tend to believe in and spread rumors. From the perspective of compensatory control theory, this can also be interpreted as individuals’ need to obtain a sense of structure brought about by deterministic information in a crisis, which leads to blind acceptance of unreliable information. Third, people exposed to public emergencies will also show stronger concern for moral issues, which, according to the compensatory control theory, is an individual’s search for certain social values. Further, the need for order and structure still matters when focusing on values. By emphasizing the objective standard of morality and strengthening the value that they believe in, people can achieve a sense of structure and order to some extent and thus, compensate for the lack of perceived control. Finally, in the context of public emergencies, there is another typical public behavior: irrational buying and hoarding of commodities required for daily life or event protection materials. This phenomenon can also be partially attributed to the performance of the individual need for structure. Due to the lack of a sense of control, individuals need to satisfy their internal needs for control and order through the possession of tangible material resources, which leads to their irrational purchasing behavior. These typical symptoms (belief in conspiracy theories, spreading rumors, moral concerns, and irrational hoarding) can also be explained by other social psychological theories to some extent. For example, by analyzing an individual’s fear of death and the worldview defense process used to overcome this fear, terror management theory can explain an individual’s focus on moral values. Similarly, the uncertainty management theory and meaning maintenance model can also explain some psychological and behavioral reactions of individuals in public emergencies. However, we believe that compensatory control theory has a unique advantage in understanding the above phenomena. This is because it has a clearer definition of antecedents (lack of perceived control) and consequences (need for structure) and shows a wide range of explanatory power and cross-cultural applicability. We suggest that in future studies, people’s psychological and behavioral responses to public emergencies should be further explored from the perspective of compensatory control. In addition, future research should delve deeper to explore this issue from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives.

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.

Facing epistemic and complex uncertainty in serious illness: The role of mindfulness and shared mind

BackgroundEpistemic uncertainty refers to situations in which available evidence is insufficient or unreliable, often accompanied by complexity due to novel contexts, multifactorial causation, and emerging options (the “unknowable unknown”). It stands in contrast to aleatory uncertainty where probabilities are known, and potential benefits and harms can be calculated and presented graphically (the “knowable unknown”). DiscussionEpistemic uncertainty is common, and encompasses uncertainty about the nature of the illness, whom to entrust with one’s care, and one’s ability to adapt and cope. Communication about the “unknowable unknown” occurs infrequently and ineffectively, and there is little research on improving communication in the face of epistemic and complex uncertainty. Terror Management Theory (TMT) predicts that in encountering serious illness, people engage in “worldview defense” – suppressing death-related thoughts, affiliating with like-minded others, and developing cognitive rigidity and intolerance of information that challenges their worldview. Mindfulness is associated with diminished defensive worldview reactions and cognitive rigidity, and greater tolerance of ambiguity. Shared mind encompasses shared understanding and affective attunement. ConclusionFor clinicians and seriously ill patients facing epistemic uncertainty, psychologically-informed interventions that promote mindfulness and shared mind offer promise in promoting open discussions regarding prognostic uncertainty, advance care planning, and treatment decision-making.

The COVID-19 pandemic, authoritarianism, and rejection of sexual dissenters in Poland.

In Poland, gender hierarchy restricting women’s sexuality and hetero-normativity are rooted in traditional ‘family values’ supported by the teachings of the Polish Catholic Church and attached to Polish national identity. Dissenters to traditional norms regulating gender and sexual relations are rejected as threat to social order and national unity. Latent growth curve modeling performed on data from a three-wave longitudinal study indicated linear, inter-related increases in authoritarianism, a desire for national cohesion and rejection of sexual dissenters in the nationally representative sample of participants (N = 889) as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in Poland. Data were collected before and during the outbreak of the pandemic allowing us to link the changes in social attitudes to this naturally occurring threat. Cross-lagged panel analysis indicated that authoritarianism predicted desire for national cohesion, which resulted in rejection of dissenters. These results are in line with theoretical models of authoritarianism as a response to threat. They are also in line with findings linking death anxiety and the threat of infectious disease to increases in authoritarianism, traditional worldview defense, in-group cohesion and sexual restrictiveness.

Mortality salience in an offline and online setting

The current study aims to examine the effects of mortality salience effects on worldview defense in an offline and online setting. Participants were 146 (66 offline and 80 online) Singaporeans. Participants were randomly assigned to either the mortality salience condition or the control condition and after a delay completed a Worldview Defense Assessment. No significant mortality salience effects on worldview defense occurred in either setting. The results might be explained by the Asian sample, Singapore’s culture of tolerance, and data collection during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Future research directions include examining the effects of COVID-19 in activating worldview defense.

Defending one's worldview under mortality salience: Testing the validity of an established idea

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that mortality salience (MS) leads to more negative perceptions of persons who oppose one's worldview and to more positive perceptions of persons who confirm one's worldview. Recent failed replications of classic findings have thrown into question empirical validity for this established idea. We believe, that there are crucial methodological and theoretical aspects that have been neglected in these studies which limit their explanatory power; thus, the studies of this registered report aimed to address these issues and to directly test the worldview defense hypothesis. First, we conducted two preregistered lab studies applying the classic worldview defense paradigm. The stimulus material (worldview-confirming and -opposing essays) was previously validated for students at a German university. In both studies, the MS manipulation (between-subjects) was followed by a distraction phase. Then, in Study 1 (N = 131), each participant read both essays (within-subjects). In Study 2 (N = 276), the essays were manipulated between-subjects. Credibility attribution towards the author was assessed as the dependent variable. In both studies, the expected interaction effects were not significant. In a third highly powered (registered) study (N = 1356), we used a previously validated worldview-opposing essay. The five classic worldview defense items served as the main dependent measure. The MS effect was not significant. Bayesian analyses favored the null hypothesis. An internal meta-analysis revealed a very small (Hedges' g = 0.09) but nonsignificant (p = .058) effect of MS. Altogether, the presented studies reveal challenges in providing convincing evidence for this established idea.

Romantic intimacy and terror management: Examining the mediating roles of felt security, relational self-esteem, and relational worldview defense

Terror management theory posits that close relationships assuage existential mortality concerns because they foster attachment-based felt security, enhance self-esteem, and validate shared cultural worldviews. However, the relative buffering influence of these mechanisms remains relatively unknown and has sparked theoretical debate. Some theorists argue that felt security is central, whereas others suggest it does not offer unique protection from death awareness, independent of self-esteem and worldview validation. We conducted two experiments to clarify felt security’s role. Testing felt security on its own, it significantly mediated the association between death awareness and increased intimacy striving (Study 1). However, when tested alongside relational self-esteem and worldview validation, felt security again exerted a significant mediating effect in parallel with relational self-esteem, although only among female participants (Study 2). These results provide initial support for the subordinate tripartite model and functional independence claim put forth in recent years. We discuss the implications of these findings.

To be or not to be tolerant? A Terror Management perspective exploring the ideological dilemma of tolerance and prejudice.

Tolerance has been identified as a way to reduce prejudice. However, tolerance has also been posited as an ideological dilemma and may have its limits. The present research explores this idea, utilizing insights from Terror Management Theory. Three studies were conducted using online samples. Study 1 found that a tolerance prime led to less discrimination towards Muslims after being reminded of death, but increased discrimination when reminded of terrorism. Additionally, tolerance did not affect levels of affective prejudice. Study 2 found that reading an essay that threatened the norm of tolerance led to increased levels of death-thought accessibility and worldview defence, particularly amongst liberal participants. Study 3 found that a tolerance prime attenuated mortality salience decreasing support for author rights, but not if the worldview critic was intolerant. Taken together, the present findings suggest that using tolerance to reduce prejudice and foster more positive intergroup relations has its boundaries. If others are perceived to not be tolerant themselves, then people may be more motivated to defend, rather than uphold the norm of tolerance.

To the Victors Go the Existential Spoils: The Mental-Health Benefits of Cultural Worldview Defense for People WHO Successfully Meet Cultural Standards and Valued Goals

Introduction: Research in support of terror management theory suggests that mortality concerns will activate symbolic defenses associated with cultural worldviews, and when these defenses are activated, mental health will benefit. However, no study to date has examined this process in full. We filled this gap, while testing the moderating effect of feeling successful vis-à-vis cultural value-standards. Method: In two studies, we hypothesized that participants who feel successful at meeting cultural standards would engage cultural worldview defense (WVD) following mortality salience (MS), and as a consequence of their defensiveness, would experience greater mental health. Results: In Study 1, MS increased pro-American WVD only among relatively wealthy participants, which in turn reduced death-thought accessibility. In Study 2, MS increased pro-American WVD only among participants primed with felt success (vs. failure), which in turn reduced anxiety and depression. Conclusions: Culture can relieve death-related distress and promote mental health to the extent that it provides feelings of success.

(Don't Fear) the Reefer: Cannabis Worldview Beliefs and the Management of Death-Related Existential Concerns Among High Frequency Cannabis Users

Introduction: The current research employed a terror management framework to understand the cognitive effects of frequent drug use. The study focused specifically on cannabis users and tested the hypothesis that frequent cannabis use is associated with the development of cannabis-related worldview beliefs that take on an existential function for frequent users. Method: Participants (N = 226) answered questions about their cannabis use and completed a measure of cannabis worldview investment. Thereafter, they were randomly assigned to a cannabis worldview threat (vs. no threat) condition and completed measures of death-thought accessibility (DTA) and cannabis worldview defense. Results: A positive association between frequency of cannabis use and cannabis worldview investment was observed. Moreover, among high frequency cannabis users, those highly invested in the cannabis worldview evinced significantly more DTA following exposure to the worldview threat than no threat condition. Participants with high investment in the cannabis worldview also showed more derogation of the cannabis worldview threat (vs. no threat) essay-author. However, this relationship was not influenced by DTA or frequency of cannabis use. Discussion: A terror management perspective on drug use is discussed, including implications for understanding drug abuse, addiction, and treatment.

Existential Threat Fuels Worldview Defense, but not after Priming Autonomy Orientation

Although mortality salience (MS) typically motivates worldview defensiveness, priming an autonomy/self-determined orientation may attenuate that defensiveness. In Study 1 (n = 156) MS (vs. pain) had higher support for militaristic defense of American interests abroad, unless participants were also primed with autonomy-oriented (vs. controlled) concepts. In Study 2 (n = 205), a pilot survey found participants were strongly aware of and interested in the cultural value of tolerance; MS (vs. neutral) had higher defense of that salient value in the form of support for more expansive/accepting immigration policy, unless participants were primed to recall autonomous/self-determined (vs. controlled) experiences. These findings bear implications for both aggressive and prosocial existential defenses, political ideology, and the intersection of existential defense and growth orientations.