title: Death and television: terror management theory and themes of law and justice on television.
abstract: Based on terror management theory, it was hypothesized that media choices may be affected by the salience of death-related thoughts. Three experiments with samples of undergraduate students were conducted to investigate whether such a process would affect preferences for law and justice television programming. In the first experiment (n = 132), individuals for whom mortality had been made salient through experimental induction preferred more programs with law and justice themes than individuals for whom mortality had not been made salient. In the second experiment (n = 761), this effect was observed regardless of trust in law enforcement and only for participants induced to think about death, not those induced to think about pain. In the third experiment (n = 163), participants for whom mortality was salient who watched a crime drama that showed justice being carried out showed a diminished self-enhancing bias compared to participants who watched a version of the same program in which justice was thwarted. Results indicate that entertainment choices are influenced by thought of death beyond simply seeking distraction and that entertainment programming emphasizing justice can effectively ameliorate existential anxiety that arises from thoughts of death.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA. lartaylor@ucdavis.edu
authors.forename: Laramie D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Taylor
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001293:Attitude to Death; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D035846:Law Enforcement; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012935:Social Justice; D012945:Social Values; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013690:Television; D055815:Young Adult