Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values

On the basis of terror management theory, it was hypothesized that when mortality is made salient, Ss would respond especially positively toward those who uphold cultural values and especially negatively toward those who violate cultural values. In Experiment 1, judges recommended especially harsh bonds for a prostitute when mortality was made salient. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with student Ss and demonstrated that it occurs only among Ss with relatively negative attitudes toward prostitution. Experiment 3 demonstrated that mortality salience also leads to larger reward recommendations for a hero who upheld cultural values. Experiments 4 and 5 showed that the mortality salience effect does not result from heightened self-awareness or physiological arousal. Experiment 6 replicated the punishment effect with a different mortality salience manipulation. Implications for the role of fear of death in social behavior are discussed.     

The life and death of creativity: The effects of mortality salience on self versus social-directed creative expression

Research in terror management theory suggests that our connections to others function, in part, to provide protection from the anxiety associated with the awareness of inevitable death. The individuating nature of creative expression can potentially undermine these connections, making creativity particularly problematic when one is dealing with mortality concerns. Consistent with this, a number of findings have elucidated emotional consequences associated with creativity when mortality concerns are active. However, to date, research has not focused on how mortality awareness may impact levels of creativity. The present study assessed the hypothesis that mortality concerns will inhibit creative behavior that threatens social connections but will not undermine and may even facilitate creative behavior that bolsters social connections. The results showed that amplified concerns about mortality decreased creativity when the act was self-directed but not when it was community-directed. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.     

No atheists in foxholes: arguments for (but not against) afterlife belief buffers mortality salience effects for atheists

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that people cope with mortality concerns via symbolic immortality (e.g., secular cultural beliefs that outlast death) and/or literal immortality (afterlife belief). However, what happens when these two forms of immortality conflict, as in atheism? Would atheists' mortality concerns be better assuaged by affirming an afterlife, or by affirming their literal immortality-denying worldview? Drawing on an untested TMT hypothesis, we predicted that atheists would be buffered from mortality concerns if their atheistic worldview - no life after death - was challenged, but not if it was supported. Results confirmed the hypothesis and were also found for theists and agnostics. These findings support TMT's claim that literal immortality is of paramount importance in ameliorating death concerns.     

They all look the same to me (unless they're angry): from out-group homogeneity to out-group heterogeneity

People often find it more difficult to distinguish ethnic out-group members compared with ethnic in-group members. A functional approach to social cognition suggests that this bias may be eliminated when out-group members display threatening facial expressions. In the present study, 192 White participants viewed Black and White faces displaying either neutral or angry expressions and later attempted to identify previously seen faces. Recognition accuracy for neutral faces showed the out-group homogeneity bias, but this bias was entirely eliminated for angry Black faces. Indeed, when participants' cognitive processing capacity was constrained, recognition accuracy was greater for angry Black faces than for angry White faces, demonstrating an out-group heterogeneity bias.     

An enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values: The impact of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations and bolstering of cultural worldviews

This enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values focuses on the impact of mortality and uncertainty salience on people’s reactions to events that violate or bolster their cultural norms and values. Five experiments show that both mortality and uncertainty salience influence people’s reactions to violations and bolstering of their cultural worldviews, yielding evidence for both terror and uncertainty management theories. Interestingly, the five experiments consistently reveal that uncertainty salience has a bigger impact on people’s reactions than mortality salience, suggesting that the former may be a more important antecedent of reactions to norms and values than the latter. Findings further suggest that uncertainty salience did not instigate death-thoughts whereas reactions to norms and values were stronger among mortality salient participants who thought of uncertainty as a result of the mortality salience manipulation than mortality salient participants who did not think of uncertainty following this manipulation. Implications are discussed.     

Explanation versus accommodation: Reply to Bowers (2010)

Bowers (2010) presented a critique of the account of masked priming presented by Norris and Kinoshita (2008) based on the Bayesian Reader model of visual word recognition (Norris, 2006). In this reply, we point out that: (1) Bowers' criticisms are based on his misunderstanding of both the Bayesian or ideal-observer approach, and the theoretical claims made in Norris and Kinoshita, and (2) Bowers' alternative account of the key data presented in Norris and Kinoshita relies on a series of ad hoc assumptions that are combined in different proportions to postdict any pattern of data.     

Mind-set and close relationships: when bias leads to (In)accurate predictions

The authors investigated whether mind-set influences the accuracy of relationship predictions. Because people are more biased in their information processing when thinking about implementing an important goal, relationship predictions made in an implemental mind-set were expected to be less accurate than those made in a more impartial deliberative mind-set. In Study 1, open-ended thoughts of students about to leave for university were coded for mind-set. In Study 2, mind-set about a major life goal was assessed using a self-report measure. In Study 3, mind-set was experimentally manipulated. Overall, mind-set interacted with forecasts to predict relationship survival. Forecasts were more accurate in a deliberative mind-set than in an implemental mind-set. This effect was more pronounced for long-term than for short-term relationship survival. Finally, deliberatives were not pessimistic; implementals were unduly optimistic.     

The ghost of Christmas future: didn't Scrooge learn to be good? Commentary on Magnuson,McMurray, Tanenhaus,and Aslin (2003)

Magnuson, McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin [Cogn. Sci. 27 (2003) 285] suggest that they have evidence of lexical feedback in speech perception, and that this evidence thus challenges the purely feedforward Merge model [Behav. Brain Sci. 23 (2000) 299]. This evidence is open to an alternative explanation, however, one which preserves the assumption in Merge that there is no lexical–prelexical feedback during on‐line speech processing. This explanation invokes the distinction between perceptual processing that occurs in the short term, as an utterance is heard, and processing that occurs over the longer term, for perceptual learning.     

Political goals versus scientific truths: a response to Jackson (2003)

Three fundamental issues separate Jackson's (2003) methodological views from mine. One, whereas he believes an absolute moral view can prevail in a democracy, I assume moral pluralism is an inevitable byproduct of an open society. Two, Jackson feels that psychology can identify a correct moral position, whereas I postulate natural science psychology is only capable of revealing the empirical consequences of competing social policies and their moral implications. Three, Jackson espouses a politically active psychology that from my perspective is antithetical to a democratic and scientific ethic. In sum, Jackson's coupling of science with political advocacy will lead to a mistrust of psychology that will deny a democracy the opportunity to base its social policies on reliable psychological information.     

Source ROCs are (typically) curvilinear: comment on Yonelinas (1999)

On the basis of his assumption that recollection is a threshold process, A. P. Yonelinas (1999) predicted linear source-identification receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) and recently reported data that were consistent with this prediction. In this article, the authors present data showing curvilinear source-identification ROCs across various encoding and test conditions. On the basis of the source-monitoring framework (e.g., M. K. Johnson, S. Hashtroudi, & D. S. Lindsay, 1993), the authors argue that curvilinearity of source-identification ROCs is a result of differences in the qualitative characteristics of memories rather than simply the influence of undifferentiated familiarity as the dual-process model might suggest.     

Faces in the face of death: Effects of exposure to life-threatening events and mortality salience on facial expression recognition in combat and noncombat military veterans

Soldiers in war zones often experience life-threatening events that put their lives at stake. The present study examined how these exposures shape soldiers' social behavior, manifested by recognition of facial expressions. In addition, we investigated how explicit awareness of one's eventual death affects sensitivity to facial expressions. Veterans of elite military combat units were exposed to conditions of mortality or pain salience and later requested to label the emotions depicted in threatening and nonthreatening faces. Combat veterans were more accurate than noncombat veterans in identifying threatening expressions, both in mortality or pain salience induction (Experiment 1) or under no induction at all (Experiment 2). In addition, noncombat veterans primed with mortality salience identified fear expressions more accurately than those primed with pain salience. Finally, mortality salience improved accuracy for nonthreatening expressions for all veterans. The present results demonstrate that fear of death, resulting from exposure to concrete life-endangering perils or from thoughts on human's inevitable death, influences perception of facial expressions, which is critical for successful interpersonal communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The best men are (not always) already taken: female preference for single versus attached males depends on conception risk

Because men of higher genetic quality tend to be poorer partners and parents than men of lower genetic quality, women may profit from securing a stable investment from the latter, while obtaining good genes via extrapair mating with the former. Only if conception occurs, however, do the evolutionary benefits of such a strategy overcome its costs. Accordingly, we predicted that (a) partnered women should prefer attached men, because such men are more likely than single men to have pair-bonding qualities, and hence to be good replacement partners, and (b) this inclination should reverse when fertility rises, because attached men are less available for impromptu sex than single men. In this study, 208 women rated the attractiveness of men described as single or attached. As predicted, partnered women favored attached men at the low-fertility phases of the menstrual cycle, but preferred single men (if masculine, i.e., advertising good genetic quality) when conception risk was high.     

Single versus multiple systems of category learning: Reply to Nosofsky and Kruschke (2002)

Nosofsky and Kruschke (2002) argued that the singlesystem ALCOVE model (Kruschke, 1992) can account for the dual-task category learning data reported by Waldron and Ashby (2001). In our reply, we argue that Nosofsky and Kruschke overstated the ability of ALCOVE to account for the Waldron and Ashby results. In fact, ALCOVE has difficulty with these data, and we show that the only versions of ALCOVE that actually fit the Waldron and Ashby accuracy data make incorrect predictions about other previously unreported features of that experiment. We also show that the dual-system COVIS model (Ashby, Alfonso-Reese, Turken, & Waldron, 1998) naturally predicts these results.     

Autonomic and eyeblink conditioning are closely related to contingency awareness: reply to Wiens and Ohman (2002) and Manns et al. (2002)

S. Wiens and A. Ohman (2002) disputed the conclusion that Pavlovian conditioning is strongly related to contingency awareness (P. F. Lovibond & D. R. Shanks, 2002) on the basis that an inappropriate definition of awareness was used. J. R. Manns, R. E. Clark, and L. R. Squire (2002) contended that delay eyeblink conditioning is independent of awareness. The authors of the present article consider these arguments, highlight several problems in the new studies described by the commentators, and conclude that there is still little evidence for unconscious conditioning in either subliminal autonomic conditioning or eyeblink conditioning. The most parsimonious account of existing data is that a single learning process gives rise to both awareness and conditioned responding. Further progress in evaluating the possibility of unconscious conditioning would be facilitated by the development of more completely specified and testable dual-process models.     

Sharing moral values: anticipated ingroup respect as a determinant of adherence to morality-based (but not competence-based) group norms

This research examines how moral values regulate the behavior of individual group members. It argues that group members behave in line with moral group norms because they anticipate receiving ingroup respect when enacting moral values that are shared by ingroup members. Data from two experimental studies offer evidence in support. In Study 1 (N = 82), morality-based (but not competence-based) ingroup norms determined whether members of a low-status group opted for individual versus collective strategies for status improvement. This effect was mediated by anticipated ingroup respect and emerged regardless of whether group norms prescribed collectivistic or individualistic behavior. These effects were replicated in Study 2 (N = 69), where no comparable effect was found as a result of moral norms communicated by a higher status outgroup. This indicates that social identity implications rather than interdependence or more generic concerns about social approval or importance of cooperation drive these effects.     

Useful scientific theories are useful: A reply to Rouder, Pratte, and Morey (2010)

In a recognition memory experiment, Mickes, Wixted, and Wais (2007) reported that distributional statistics computed from ratings made using a 20-point confidence scale (which showed that the standard deviation of the ratings made to lures was approximately 0.80 times that of the targets) essentially matched the distributional statistics estimated indirectly by fitting a Gaussian signal-detection model to the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC). We argued that the parallel results serve to increase confidence in the Gaussian unequal-variance model of recognition memory. Rouder, Pratte, and Morey (2010) argue that the results are instead uninformative. In their view, parametric models of latent memory strength are not empirically distinguishable. As such, they argue, our conclusions are arbitrary, and parametric ROC analysis should be abandoned. In an attempt to demonstrate the inherent untestability of parametric models, they describe a non-Gaussian equal-variance model that purportedly accounts for our findings just as well as the Gaussian unequal-variance model does. However, we show that their new model—despite being contrived after the fact and in full view of the to-be-explained data—does not account for the results as well as the unequal-variance Gaussian model does. This outcome manifestly demonstrates that parametric models are, in fact, testable. Moreover, the results differentially favor the Gaussian account over the probit model and over several other reasonable distributional forms (such as the Weibull and the lognormal).