Proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on willingness to engage in health promoting behavior along the life span

The current studies examine proximal and distal mortality salience effects on the willingness to engage in health-promoting activities and explore the roles of age and self-esteem. In Study 1, 164 participants completed a self-esteem scale, were assigned to a mortality salience or a neutral condition, and then completed a scale, tapping their willingness to engage in health promoting activities. Findings revealed that in the proximal mode, mortality salience led the young and middle-aged adults to report higher willingness to promote health behaviors, whereas older adults tended to show a lower willingness to promote their health compared to the control condition. In Study 2, a total of 251 participants completed the same series of questionnaires, including a distracting task immediately after the mortality salience manipulation. Findings revealed that, in the distal mode, whereas death reminders did not affect young adults, mortality salience led middle-aged participants to express higher willingness to conduct health-promoting behaviors than in a control condition. The mortality salience induction did not affect older adults with high self-esteem, but led low self-esteem individuals to report higher willingness to promote their health. The differences between the reactions of the different age groups in both the defense modes are discussed in view of the terror management theory.     

Mortality salience increases death-anxiety for individuals low in personal need for structure

Research derived from terror management theory suggests that death cognition does not lead to death-anxiety because people respond to thoughts of death by turning to social and cultural structures that provide a sense of psychological security. However, recent research indicates that it is people high, but not low, in personal need for structure that turn to social and cultural structures in response to heightened death cognition. Such findings suggest that people low in PNS may be vulnerable to experiencing death-anxiety when death thoughts are activated. The current study explored this possibility. Individual differences in personal need for structure were measured and death cognition (mortality salience) was manipulated. Subsequently, death-anxiety was assessed. Mortality salience increased death-anxiety, but only among individuals low in personal need for structure.     

Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review

Terror management theory (TMT; J. Greenberg, T. Pyszczynski, & S. Solomon, 1986) posits that people are motivated to pursue positive self-evaluations because self-esteem provides a buffer against the omnipresent potential for anxiety engendered by the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Empirical evidence relevant to the theory is reviewed showing that high levels of self-esteem reduce anxiety and anxiety-related defensive behavior, reminders of one's mortality increase self-esteem striving and defense of self-esteem against threats in a variety of domains, high levels of self-esteem eliminate the effect of reminders of mortality on both self-esteem striving and the accessibility of death-related thoughts, and convincing people of the existence of an afterlife eliminates the effect of mortality salience on self-esteem striving. TMT is compared with other explanations for why people need self-esteem, and a critique of the most prominent of these, sociometer theory, is provided.     

A time to tan: proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on sun exposure intentions

According to the dual defense model of terror management, proximal defenses are engaged to reduce the conscious impact of mortality salience, whereas thoughts of death outside of conscious awareness motivate distal defenses aimed at maintaining self-esteem. Two experiments examined these ideas by assessing women's intentions to engage in tanning-related behavior. In Study 1, when concerns about death (relative to dental pain) were in focal attention, participants increased intentions to protect themselves from dangerous sun exposure. In contrast, when thoughts about death were outside of focal attention, participants decreased interest in sun protection. In Study 2, participants primed to associate tanned skin with an attractive appearance responded to mortality concerns outside of focal attention with increased interest in tanning products and services. These findings are discussed in relation to the dual-defense model of terror management, societal determinants of self-esteem, and implications for health risk and promotion.     

Self-affirmation and mortality salience: affirming values reduces worldview defense and death-thought accessibility

To the extent that cultural worldviews provide meaning in the face of existential concerns, specifically the inevitability of death, affirming a valued aspect of one's worldview should render reminders of death less threatening. The authors report two studies in support of this view. In Study 1, mortality salience led to derogation of a worldview violator unless participants had first affirmed an important value. In Study 2, self-affirmation before a reminder of death was associated with reduced accessibility of death-related thoughts a short while thereafter. The authors propose that actively affirming one's worldview alters reactions to reminders of mortality by reducing the accessibility of death-related thoughts, not by boosting self-esteem. These studies attest to the flexible nature of psychological self-defense and to the central role of cultural worldviews in managing death-related concerns.     

The implications of death for health: a terror management health model for behavioral health promotion

This article introduces a terror management health model (TMHM). The model integrates disparate health and social psychology literatures to elucidate how the conscious and nonconscious awareness of death can influence the motivational orientation that is most operative in the context of health decisions. Three formal propositions are presented. Proposition 1 suggests that conscious thoughts about death can instigate health-oriented responses aimed at removing death-related thoughts from current focal attention. Proposition 2 suggests that the unconscious resonance of death-related cognition promotes self-oriented defenses directed toward maintaining, not one's health, but a sense of meaning and self-esteem. The last proposition suggests that confrontations with the physical body may undermine symbolic defenses and thus present a previously unrecognized barrier to health promotion activities. In the context of each proposition, moderators are proposed, research is reviewed, and implications for health promotion are discussed.     

Mortality salience and the desire for offspring

Research on terror management theory (TMT) illustrates that following mortality salience (MS) people defend their cultural worldviews and bolster self-esteem to transcend death. Recently, research additionally showed that MS increased self-reports of the number of children desired in Dutch men but not in Dutch women. We conducted three studies to further investigate the role of desire for offspring in terror management. In Study 1, we conceptually replicated previous findings for Germany and found increased desire for offspring following MS in both men and women. Extending prior research Study 2 revealed that following MS not only was the accessibility of death-related thoughts increased, but also the accessibility of thoughts related to offspring. Finally, Study 3 suggested that the MS effect on ingroup bias was eliminated under conditions of offspring salience. Relating these findings to TMT, anticipated or actual offspring is discussed as a buffer against existential anxiety.     

Hopelessly mortal: The role of mortality salience,immortality and trait self-esteem in personal hope

Do people lose hope when thinking about death? Based on Terror Management Theory, we predicted that thoughts of death (i.e., mortality salience) would reduce personal hope for people low, but not high, in self-esteem, and that this reduction in hope would be ameliorated by promises of immortality. In Studies 1 and 2, mortality salience reduced personal hope for people low in self-esteem, but not for people high in self-esteem. In Study 3, mortality salience reduced hope for people low in self-esteem when they read an argument that there is no afterlife, but not when they read “evidence” supporting life after death. In Study 4, this effect was replicated with an essay affirming scientific medical advances that promise immortality. Together, these findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of mortality interact with trait self-esteem to cause changes in personal hope, and that literal immortality beliefs can aid psychological adjustment when thinking about death. Implications for understanding personal hope, trait self-esteem, afterlife beliefs and terror management are discussed.     

死亡启动影响自我参照记忆的年龄差异

以往研究表明对死亡不可避免性的认识使人类产生死亡焦虑,并且为了降低该焦虑,年轻人倾向于抑制生理自我加工;然而相比年轻人,老年人对死亡的接受程度更高,并且自我抑制能力减弱。因此本研究采用死亡启动范式,探讨了死亡对自我相关记忆的影响以及可能存在的年龄差异。实验一以大学生为被试,结果发现死亡启动后,个体对自我相关信息的再认率显著低于消极启动后;实验二以老年人为被试,结果发现死亡启动后,个体对自我相关信息的再认率与消极启动后无差异。上述结果说明,死亡启动对自我相关记忆的影响存在年龄差异。在大学生中,死亡启动使个体抑制自我相关信息,而在老年人中该抑制效应并不存在。     

From terror to joy: automatic tuning to positive affective information following mortality salience

Reminders of death tend to produce strong cognitive and behavioral responses, but little or no emotional response. In three experiments, mortality salience produced an automatic coping response that involved tuning to positive emotional information. Subjects showed increased accessibility of positive emotional information (Experiments 1 and 3) and gave more weight to positive emotion in their judgments of word similarity (Experiment 2) after contemplating death than after thinking about dental pain. This automatic coping response was found both after a delay (Experiments 1 and 2) and directly after the mortality-salience manipulation (Experiment 3), which suggests that the coping process begins immediately. Tuning to positive emotional information in response to mortality salience was unconscious and counterintuitive (Experiment 3). These findings shed light on the coping process that ensues immediately following mortality salience and help to explain why a delay is often necessary to produce effects in line with terror management theory.     

A meta-analytic examination of the goal orientation nomological net

The authors present an empirical review of the literature concerning trait and state goal orientation (GO). Three dimensions of GO were examined: learning, prove performance, and avoid performance along with presumed antecedents and proximal and distal consequences of these dimensions. Antecedent variables included cognitive ability, implicit theory of intelligence, need for achievement, self-esteem, general self-efficacy, and the Big Five personality characteristics. Proximal consequences included state GO, task-specific self-efficacy, self-set goal level, learning strategies, feedback seeking, and state anxiety. Distal consequences included learning, academic performance, task performance, and job performance. Generally speaking, learning GO was positively correlated, avoid performance GO was negatively correlated, and prove performance GO was uncorrelated with these variables. Consistent with theory, state GO tended to have stronger relationships with the distal consequences than did trait GO. Finally, using a meta-correlation matrix, the authors found that trait GO predicted job performance above and beyond cognitive ability and personality. These results demonstrate the value of GO to organizational researchers.     

Is the Meaning of Life Also the Meaning of Death? A Terror Management Perspective Reply

The human quality of self-awareness makes individuals aware of their inventible death. How does this knowledge influence meaning in life and is influenced by it? Four studies examined the association between meaning in life and awareness of death, through a Terror Management Theory perspective. Study 1 assessed the effects of a mortality reminder on self-reports of meaning in life, while exploring the moderating role of self-esteem. The findings indicate a trend in which after a mortality salience induction, high self-esteem individuals tend to view their lives as more meaningful. Studies 2 and 3 examined the effect of thinking about the meaning of life on death-thought accessibility, and found it to be higher in both the mortality and meaning salience conditions, as compared to a control condition. Study 4 sought to discover whether reminders of one’s meaning in life would yield cultural worldview validation, and indeed revealed a more severe perception of social transgressions following both mortality and meaning salience. Findings highlight the understanding that meaning in life is a basic existential concept closely related to awareness of death’s inevitability.     

Self-regulatory processes defend against the threat of death: Effects of self-control depletion and trait self-control on thoughts and fears of dying

Nine studies (N = 979) demonstrated that managing the threat of death requires self-regulation. Both trait and state self-control ability moderated the degree to which people experienced death-related thought and anxiety. Participants high (vs. low) in self-control generated fewer death-related thoughts after being primed with death, reported less death anxiety, were less likely to perceive death-related themes in ambiguous scenes, and reacted with less worldview defense when mortality was made salient. Further, coping with thoughts of death led to self-regulatory fatigue. After writing about death versus a control topic, participants performed worse on several measures of self-regulation that were irrelevant to death. These results suggest that self-regulation is a key intrapsychic mechanism for alleviating troublesome thoughts and feelings about mortality.     

A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: an extension of terror management theory

Distinct defensive processes are activated by conscious and nonconscious but accessible thoughts of death. Proximal defenses, which entail suppressing death-related thoughts or pushing the problem of death into the distant future by denying one's vulnerability, are rational, threat-focused, and activated when thoughts of death are in current focal attention. Distal terror management defenses, which entail maintaining self-esteem and faith in one's cultural worldview, function to control the potential for anxiety that results from knowing that death is inevitable. These defenses are experiential, are not related to the problem of death in any semantic or logical way, and are increasingly activated as the accessibility of death-related thoughts increases, up to the point at which such thoughts enter consciousness and proximal threat-focused defenses are initiated. Experimental evidence for this analysis is presented.     

Cancer and the threat of death: the cognitive dynamics of death-thought suppression and its impact on behavioral health intentions

Five studies examined the cognitive association between thoughts of cancer and thoughts of death and their implication for screening intentions. Study 1 found that explicit contemplation of cancer did not increase death-thought accessibility. In support of the hypothesis that this reflects suppression of death-related thoughts, Study 2 found that individuals who thought about cancer exhibited elevated death-thought accessibility under high cognitive load, and Study 3 demonstrated that subliminal primes of the word cancer led to increased death-thought accessibility. Study 4 revealed lower levels of death-thought accessibility when perceived vulnerability to cancer was high, once again suggesting suppression of death-related thoughts in response to conscious threats associated with cancer. Study 5 extended the analysis by finding that after cancer salience, high cognitive load, which presumably disrupts suppression of the association between cancer and death, decreased cancer-related self-exam intentions. Theoretical and practical implications for understanding terror management, priming and suppression, and responses to cancer are discussed.     

Culturally divergent responses to mortality salience

Two experiments compared the effects of death thoughts, or mortality salience, on European and Asian Americans. Research on terror management theory has demonstrated that in Western cultural groups, individuals typically employ self-protective strategies in the face of death-related thoughts. Given fundamental East-West differences in self-construal (i.e., the independent vs. interdependent self), we predicted that members of Eastern cultural groups would affirm other people, rather than defend and affirm the self, after encountering conditions of mortality salience. We primed European Americans and Asian Americans with either a death or a control prime and examined the effect of this manipulation on attitudes about a person who violates cultural norms (Study 1) and on attributions about the plight of an innocent victim (Study 2). Mortality salience promoted culturally divergent responses, leading European Americans to defend the self and Asian Americans to defend other people.     

死亡提醒效应的心理机制及影响因素

死亡提醒效应是指个体在死亡提醒后会产生世界观防御或自尊寻求的一种普遍现象。其心理机制是以死亡想法通达性为指标的潜在死亡焦虑,影响因素则包括年龄、宗教信仰、结构需求、自我控制、依恋类型等个体差异和不同的情境启动。未来研究应解释与死亡无直接关联的刺激可引发类似效应的原因,进一步阐释与证实潜在的死亡焦虑,并明确自尊对死亡提醒效应的影响。     

生存和死亡启动对自我参照加工的影响：ERP证据

死亡想法凸显会抑制个体的自我加工,而生存启动是否会对自我加工产生相似或是不同的影响尚不可知。本研究采用事件相关电位技术,以人格特质词自我判断任务为研究范式,探究死亡和生存启动对自我参照加工的影响。结果发现死亡启动时,自我加工所诱发的后期正成分（LPC）显著小于褒贬加工;生存启动时,自我加工的LPC成分显著大于褒贬加工。即死亡想法抑制自我加工,而生存想法促进自我加工。     

A Terror Management Perspective on the Role of Death-Related Anxiety in Psychological Dysfunction

Building on previous existential theorizing, terror management theory provides a unique approach to conceptualizing the development, maintenance, and impact of psychological disorders. The theory suggests that awareness of mortality creates the potential for anxiety, which is managed by an anxiety-buffering system consisting of one's cultural worldview, self-esteem, and interpersonal attachments. The pursuit of meaning, personal value, and interpersonal connections that motivates much human behavior is driven, in part, by the need to control this potential for death-related anxiety. This article provides an overview of terror management theory and a discussion of its implications for understanding clinical conditions, along with a review of research exploring the roles of death-related anxiety and the anxiety-buffering system in anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression.     

Mortality salience and the spreading activation of worldview-relevant constructs: exploring the cognitive architecture of terror management

Seven experiments assessed the hypothesis derived from terror management theory that reminding people of their mortality would increase accessibility of constructs central to their worldview. Experiment 1 found that mortality primes, relative to control primes, increased accessibility of nationalistic constructs for men but not for women. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and also found that mortality salience increased romantic accessibility for women but not for men. Four subsequent experiments supported the role of unconscious death-related ideation in producing these effects. A final experiment demonstrated that situational primes can increase the accessibility of nationalistic constructs for women after mortality salience. The roles of situational cues and individual differences in the effects of exposure to death-related stimuli on worldview-relevant construct accessibility are discussed.