Terror management and cognitive-experiential self-theory: Evidence that terror management occurs in the experiential system

Thread posts

See all posts in this thread below.

  • User
  • Message
  • Actions
    • Published: 07-02-2014 02:06 am
    • http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/72/5/1132/

      "The authors hypothesized, on the basis of terror management theory and cognitive-experiential self-theory, that participants in an experiential mode of thinking would respond to mortality salience with increased worldview defense and increased accessibility of death-related thoughts, whereas participants in a rational mode would not. Results from 3 studies provided convergent evidence that when participants were in an experiential mode, mortality salience produced the typical worldview defense effect, but when participants were in a rational mode it did not. Study 4 revealed that mortality salience also led to a delayed increase in the accessibility of death-related thoughts only when participants were in an experiential mode. These results supported the notion that worldview defense is intensified only if individuals are in an experiential mode when considering their mortality. Discussion focuses on implications for understanding terror management processes. "

      People using the organic contextualization did go into a emotional defensive state when presented with mortality salience, people using the deterministic contextualization did not.
  • User
  • Message
  • Actions