An existentialist view on mortality salience effects: personal hardiness, death-thought accessibility, and cultural worldview defence.
Two studies examined the possible moderating role of hardiness on reactions to mortality salience inductions. A sample of 240 Israeli undergraduate students completed a hardiness scale, were exposed to a mortality salience or control induction, and then either rated the severity and punishment of 10 social transgressions (Study 1, N = 120) or performed a word-stem completion task, which tapped the accessibility of death-related thoughts (Study 2, N = 120). Results indicated that a mortality salience induction led to more severe judgments of social transgressions as well as to more severe punishments than a control induction only among participants scoring low in the hardiness scale. However, a mortality salience induction led to a higher cognitive accessibility of death-related thoughts than a control condition regardless of participants' hardiness scores. The discussion emphasizes the importance of considering inner resources when examining reactions to mortality reminders.
Florian
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Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Mikulincer
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Hirschberger
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005086:Existentialism; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D011386:Projective Techniques; D012938:Social Perception