In the shadow of mortality

The impact of priming specific types of death on the terror management literature

Allenby, Taylor
Van de Wetering, Sven

2020-04

Terror management research manipulates mortality salience (MS) by asking participants to respond to two prompts about death, i.e., briefly describe the emotions that the thought of dying arouses in you, and briefly describe as specifically as you can what you believe will happen to you physically as you die and after you are dead. The fact that death is primed in a uniform manner across all studies leaves a large gap in the literature, i.e., the manner in which death is imagined could impact responses. This likely explains why this theory contains two competing hypotheses to explain the attitude changes that occurs after death reminders. The worldview polarization hypothesis, asserts that individuals will become more polarized in their previous political orientation (Pyszczynski, 2013). On the other hand, the conservative shift hypothesis, claims that people will become more conservative. The purpose of the current research is to investigate the origin of these hypotheses by manipulating how death is primed, i.e., by priming specific ways of dying.

This poster won the Dean, College of Arts award (2020). Advisor: Dr. Sven Van de Wetering, Department of Psychology