title: Culturally divergent responses to mortality salience.
abstract: Two experiments compared the effects of death thoughts, or mortality salience, on European and Asian Americans. Research on terror management theory has demonstrated that in Western cultural groups, individuals typically employ self-protective strategies in the face of death-related thoughts. Given fundamental East-West differences in self-construal (i.e., the independent vs. interdependent self), we predicted that members of Eastern cultural groups would affirm other people, rather than defend and affirm the self, after encountering conditions of mortality salience. We primed European Americans and Asian Americans with either a death or a control prime and examined the effect of this manipulation on attitudes about a person who violates cultural norms (Study 1) and on attributions about the plight of an innocent victim (Study 2). Mortality salience promoted culturally divergent responses, leading European Americans to defend the self and Asian Americans to defend other people.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. ma@psych.ucsb.edu
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ma-Kellams
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Blascovich
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001213:Asian / Q000523:psychology*; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009026:Mortality; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012649:Self Concept; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult