title: Fighting death with death: the buffering effects of learning that worldview violators have died.
abstract: According to terror management theory, the annihilation of people who threaten one's worldview should serve the function of defending that worldview. The present research assessed this hypothesis. A sample of Christian participants read either a worldview-threatening news article reporting on the Muslimization of Nazareth or a nonthreatening article about the aurora borealis. Half of the participants in the worldview-threat condition were informed at the end of the article that a number of Muslims had died in a plane crash on their way to Nazareth. Although reading the threatening news article increased death-thought accessibility and worldview defense relative to reading the neutral article, these increases were not observed among participants who learned that a number of Muslims were dead. Implications for understanding protracted intergroup conflict are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. jhayes@ualberta.ca
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hayes
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schimel
authors.forename: Todd J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Williams
mesh_terms: D001293:Attitude to Death; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D023481:Terrorism / Q000523:psychology*; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*