Self-related consequences of death fear and death denial

This study explores self-related outcomes (e.g., esteem, self-concept clarity, existential well-being) as a function of the interaction between self-reported levels of death fear and death denial. Consistent with the idea that positive existential growth can come from individuals facing, rather than denying, their mortality (Cozzolino, 2006), the authors observed that not fearing and denying death can bolster important positive components of the self. That is, individuals low in death denial and death fear evidenced an enhanced self that is valued, clearly conceived, efficacious, and that has meaning and purpose

I Blame Therefore it Was: Rape Myth Acceptance, Victim Blaming, and Memory Reconstruction

We examined the causal order of relationships between rape myth acceptance (RMA), victim blaming, and memory reconstruction. In Study 1, RMA-congruent memory (or alternatively, victim blaming) mediated the relationship between RMA and victim blaming (memory reconstruction). In Study 2, similar relationships emerged between RMA, victim blaming, and memory reconstruction. Although no mediation of RMA occurred in Study 2 independently, a mini meta-analysis of Studies 1 and 2 data replicated both patterns of mediation observed in Study 1. In Study 3, memory accuracy for neutral details of a rape scenario was unrelated to RMA. Manipulating memory to be more (vs. less) RMA congruent had no effect on victim blaming (Study 4), although manipulating perceived victim blameworthiness (Studies 5 and 6) produced RMA-congruent memory reconstruction when the victim was more (vs. less) blameworthy. The results suggest that, via victim blaming, RMA motivates a memory reconstruction process that explains and justifies victim blaming after the fact

Specific and individuated death reflection fosters identity integration

Identity integration is the process wherein a person assimilates multiple or conflicting identities (e.g., beliefs, values, needs) into a coherent, unified self-concept. Three experiments examined whether contemplating mortality in a specific and individuated manner (i.e., via the death reflection manipulation) facilitated outcomes indicative of identity integration. Participants in the death reflection condition (vs. control conditions) considered positive and negative life experiences as equally important in shaping their current identity (Experiment 1), regarded self-serving values and other-serving values as equally important life principles (Experiment 2), and were equally motivated to pursue growth-oriented and security-oriented needs (Experiment 3). Death reflection motivates individuals to integrate conflicting aspects of their identity into a coherent self-concept. Given that identity integration is associated with higher well-being, the findings have implications for understanding the psychological benefits of existential contemplation

How Psychological Stress Affects Emotional Prosody

We explored how experimentally induced psychological stress affects the production and recognition of vocal emotions. In Study 1a, we demonstrate that sentences spoken by stressed speakers are judged by naive listeners as sounding more stressed than sentences uttered by non-stressed speakers. In Study 1b, negative emotions produced by stressed speakers are generally less well recognized than the same emotions produced by non-stressed speakers. Multiple mediation analyses suggest this poorer recognition of negative stimuli was due to a mismatch between the variation of volume voiced by speakers and the range of volume expected by listeners. Together, this suggests that the stress level of the speaker affects judgments made by the receiver. In Study 2, we demonstrate that participants who were induced with a feeling of stress before carrying out an emotional prosody recognition task performed worse than non-stressed participants. Overall, findings suggest detrimental effects of induced stress on interpersonal sensitivity

Trust, cooperation, and equality: A psychological analysis of the formation of social capital

Research suggests that in modern Western culture there is a positive relationship between the equality of resources and the formation of trust and cooperation, two psychological components of social capital. Two studies elucidate the psychological processes underlying that relationship. Study 1 experimentally tested the influence of resource distributions on the formation of trust and intentions to cooperate; individuals receiving a deficit of resources and a surplus of resources evidenced lower levels of social capital (i.e., trust and cooperation) than did individuals receiving equal amounts. Analyses revealed the process was affective for deficit participants and cognitive for surplus participants. Study 2 provided suggestive support for the affective-model of equality and social capital using proxy variables in the 1996 General Social Survey data set. Results suggest support for a causal path of unequal resource distributions generating affective experiences and cognitive concerns of justice, which mediate disengagement and distrust of others. © 2010 The British Psychological Society

Death Contemplation, Growth, and Defense: Converging Evidence of Dual-Existential Systems?

The psychology underlying individuals' attempts to pursue a path of growth as a result of death contemplation is the focus of this article. More directly, I attempt to reconcile diverging paths in the study of death awareness and its impact on human experience; specifically, I present empirical and theoretical support for dual-existential systems that are capable of explaining mortality-induced defensiveness predicted by terror management theory (TMT), and mortality-induced growth observed among individuals who contemplate their mortality as a result of illness or trauma. I suggest that individuals process their existence either via a specific and personalized existential system, or via an abstract and categorical existential system. I also suggest that these dual-existential systems begin with differential information-processing styles and end with growth-oriented or defense-oriented motivational states and self-regulatory processes. The psychological and the societal outcomes of processing existential matters via these dual-systems are also discussed. © 2007 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

ARTICLE Greed, Death, and Values: From Terror Management to Transcendence Management Theory

Research supporting terror management theory has shown that participants facing their death (via mortality salience) exhibit more greed than do control participants. The present research attempts to distinguish mortality salience from other forms of mortality awareness. Specifically, the authors look to reports of near-death experiences and posttraumatic growth which reveal that many people who nearly die come to view seeking wealth and possessions as empty and meaningless. Guided by these reports, a manipulation called death reflection was generated. In Study 1, highly extrinsic participants who experienced death reflection exhibited intrinsic behavior. In Study 2, the manipulation was validated, and in Study 3, death reflection and mortality salience manipulations were compared. Results showed that mortality salience led highly extrinsic participants to manifest greed, whereas death reflection again generated intrinsic, unselfish behavior. The construct of value orientation is discussed along with the contrast between death reflection manipulation and mortality salience. Keywords: greed; death reflection; mortality salience Despite generations of poets, philosophers, and religious leaders decrying the "deadly sin" of greed, much of humanity is presently engaged in a consumer-based economic system that is most successful when citizens want and seek to have. Public revelations of greed on the part of a few corporate executives have recently left individuals asking, "What is it that makes some people strive for excessive gains while knowingly leaving less for others?" In attempts to distinguish the psychological factors that drive greed, recent research has focused on two concepts: value orientation and reactions to death awareness. VALUE ORIENTATION Early humanistic theorists such as PSPB, TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY Of all things that move man, one of the principal ones is his terror of death. (Becker, 1973, p. 11) Based on the work of Terror management research activates death awareness in participants through a manipulation called mortality salience. In operationally defining mortality salience, researchers have exposed participants to gory video scenes, funeral homes, and fear of death inventories Some recent evidence points to the potential prosocial effects of mortality salience in what researchers called the "Scrooge effect" The potential link between death awareness and extrinsic values has recently received attention from researchers trying to expand the list of factors, beyond value orientation, that play a role in greedy behavior. Using mortality salience, Researchers actively involved in the study of PTG have focused on a wide variety of life crises, including divorce Many of the same dramatic positive life changes witnessed in PTG studies are ubiquitous in the study of the near-death experience. Many near-death experiencers (NDErs) come very close to dying, whereas others are actually declared clinically dead. Likening the experience to a "spiritual catalyst," Ring (1984) outlined the value shifts most often seen in people as a result of neardeath experiences: appreciation of life, concern for others, lack of concern for impressing others, lack of materialism, and higher quest for meaning. As seen in the PTG literature, A common thread also found among NDErs is a newfound acceptance of death and a feeling of transcendence in that they no longer fear death and instead fully accept their mortality MORTALITY AWARENESS Terror management theory, near-death experience reports, and PTG research address the relationship between mortality and value orientation in very different ways. Results supporting terror management theory suggest that for people who endorse extrinsic values, reminders of their own mortality will lead to a further embracing of their worldview (i.e., greed). Conversely, near-death experience studies and PTG investigations suggest that coming face to face with mortality leaves individuals striving for intrinsic rewards. Examining the key features of the near-death experience alongside terror management's mortality salience manipulation can help explain these divergent responses. The most noticeable difference between a near-death experience and a typical mortality salience manipulation is the level of abstractness associated with mortality. Often, the first aspect shared by NDErs is the manner in which they believe they died. Whereas mortality salience often introduces the concept of death as an abstract concern that is unspecified in its connection to the participant, the near-death experience places a person's death in a concrete setting. In simpler terms, mortality salience seems to be asking, "What do you think of death?" whereas the near-death experience seems to be asking "This is how you died, what do you think?" Another element that consistently appears in neardeath experiences yet remains largely absent from mortality salience is the "life review" This anecdotal evidence suggests that after a neardeath experience, people respond in a manner quite different from individuals exposed to mortality salience. Whereas mortality salience leads to worldview defense and immortality striving, near-death experiences seem to compel worldview capitulation and psychological integration. It is this evidence of a value shift from extrinsic to intrinsic among NDErs that opens the door for a new form of experimentally induced mortality awareness. STUDY 1 A review of Ring and Elsaesser Valarino's (1998) work reveals three core elements of the near-death experience: (a) an actual death, (b) a life review, and (c) the opportunity for NDErs to take the perspective of others. We kept these three issues in mind when developing scenarios for our mortality manipulation, called death reflection. To address facing death, half of our participants read a scenario in which they died, whereas the other half read a control scenario. To capture the life review and perspective-taking elements, we included openended questions after the scenario. Along with death reflection, we assessed each participant's value orientation. Given that extrinsically oriented individuals desire wealth, we examined the effects of death reflection on greed. In assessing greed, we counted raffle tickets taken by participants in a limited-resource behavioral task. We predicted that when not facing death, participants with a high extrinsic orientation would evidence greater levels of greed than participants with a low extrinsic orientation, whereas experiencing our death reflection manipulation would lead to lower levels of greed among highly extrinsic participants. Method Participants. Forty-eight introductory psychology students from California State University, Sacramento (38 women, 10 men), ranging in age from 17 to 47 (M = 21.75, SD = 5.97), participated in the study to fulfill a course requirement. 2 Most of the sample was Caucasian (56%), followed by Asian (19%), African American (10%), and Latino (6%), with the remaining participants' ethnicity unknown. Materials. The 30-item Aspirations Index (based on For our death reflection manipulation, participants were asked to read and imagine themselves experiencing the events described in a scenario and then to answer open-ended questions as if the events actually occurred. In the death scenario, participants imagined waking up in the middle of the night in a friend's apartment on the "20th floor of an old, downtown building" to the "sounds of screams and the choking smell of smoke." The scenario (see Appendix A) details the participant's futile attempts to escape the room and burning building before finally giving in to the fire and eventually death. After reading the death scenario, participants answered the following questions: 1. Please describe in detail the thoughts and emotions you felt while imagining the scenario. 2. If you did experience this event, how do you think you would handle the final moments? 3. Again imagining it did happen to you, describe the life you led up to that point. 4. How do you feel your family would react if it did happen to you? We generated these questions to activate some of the common elements found in near-death experiences. The first two questions reinforce the notion of facing an actual death, as opposed to the abstract concept of mortality. The third and fourth questions mirror the neardeath experience of life review in that Question 3 allowed the participants to reflect on their own life and Question 4 allowed them to take the perspective of others. Participants in the "no death" control condition read a similar scenario in that they imagined waking up in the same apartment to "the sound of a clock radio and the pleasant smell of coffee." In this scenario, participants imagined spending the day sightseeing and shopping with a family member, before heading back to the apartment for dinner and bed. After reading the no death scenario, participants answered the following questions: 1. Please describe in detail the thoughts and emotions you felt while imagining the scenario. 2. Have you ever experienced an event like the one described in the scenario? 3. Imagining an event like the one described did happen to you, describe the life you led up to that point. 4. Again imagining this event did happen to you, describe the thoughts and emotions of the family member with whom you spent the day. These questions were designed to mirror the death reflection questions, providing control participants an opportunity to reflect on their life and to take the perspective of others. After completing the questions, participants responded to a demographic sheet that included a question assessing the participants' level of spirituality. Finally, we assessed greed by counting the number of raffle tickets taken by participants in a limited-resource task. 3 Procedure. Participants were placed in individual rooms and randomly provided with study packets. After completing the Aspirations Index, students encountered a request to read their scenario slowly, imagining they were actually experiencing the event. After answering the questions and completing the demographics sheet, the students received another page designed to look different from the study materials (different typeface and colored paper). This flyer contained the cover story regarding the raffle tickets (good for a $100 gift certificate) that were contained in an envelope attached to the flyer (see Appendix B). Our intent was to establish that participants were coming into the study in waves and that as more students participated, the more the number of tickets in the envelope would diminish. We also wanted to make it clear that eventually the envelope would be empty, thus the instruction, "you need to tell a research assistant that the envelope is empty. You will receive one ticket to maintain a chance of winning the prize." The flyer's text made it explicit that each ticket in the envelope was a potential winner, so participants knew the more tickets they took, the better their chances (creating poorer chances for future participants). The flyer informed all participants that they were in the fourth wave to go through the study. We set this constant of "fourth wave" to prevent students from trying to figure out how many tickets had been in the envelope at the beginning of the study. We wanted participants to believe that three other participants had gone through the envelope before them, making it impossible to know how many tickets had been there and how many tickets the others had taken. The instructions directed participants to count how many tickets were left in the envelope by the presumed previous three students. Each envelope actually contained 20 tickets despite the flyer story that it could contain more (assuming the people before them took tickets) or fewer (the envelope could have been empty). Participants were debriefed after they took their tickets. This process took approximately 30 min. After completing the study, we randomly selected a raffle ticket from those taken and awarded the gift certificate. Results Content analysis. We created our death reflection manipulation in an attempt to provide a laboratory analog to the near-death experience. Based on the openended responses provided by participants in the death condition, it seems the manipulation did have an emotional impact. Virtually all of the participants facing their death expressed reactions in strong emotional terms. Examples are as follows: "I felt panic, fear, and sadness which led to an understanding of death, contentment;" "I thought about how I focused on the unimportant things like money and appearances instead of what matters most, the ones I love;" and "I thought deeply about my family and girlfriend. Also about life and how I should not take it for granted." Many participants imagining their death also reported physical responses to the scenario, such as, "I got goose bumps;" "My heart rate increased;" and "I had to fight back tears." Thus, it appears our manipulation did allow participants to become intensely involved with their death scenario. To further examine the effectiveness and conceptual validity of our death reflection manipulation we conducted a content analysis of the open-ended answers. Although the inherent differences between the death and no death scenarios hinder us from making too many inferences about a direct comparison, we did code responses from both scenarios to shed light on the participants' thoughts and emotions. Across both scenarios, our coders found 15 categories that seemed to capture the essence of the responses. Those categories are positive affect, negative affect, references to death pain, physical sensations, thoughts of past life, thoughts of others, selfish thoughts of others, religious references, goals in life, regrets, negative life comments, and positive life comments. After counting the number of occurrences of each content category for all participants, these category counts were transformed into proportions of total occurrences to standardize response rates across respondents. We did this to account for the variation we witnessed in the length of responses, which ranged from a few sentences in some cases to requiring the backs of the study packet pages in other cases. A MANOVA using the Wilks criterion revealed significant differences on the content categories as a function of the scenarios, F(12, 35) = 26.06, p < .01. Univariate tests showed that participants in the death condition responded with a significantly higher proportion of negative affect (fear, sadness, etc.), physical sensations, life reflection, religious references, and goals in life. Conversely, participants in the control condition responded with significantly more accounts of positive affect, selfish thoughts of others ("They want to make me happy," "They wanted to show how much I impacted them. They wanted to spend as much time as they could with me."), and negative life comments ("Extremely stressed with the hustles and bustles of life," "I wish I had more friends. I sometimes feel isolated."). Although we found significant differences on some content categories that seemed suggestive, the scenarios were so different in design that it seems best to hold back any deeper analysis of the differences at this time. A more informative content analysis is presented in conjunction with Study 3, which allows for a comparison of two mortality manipulations. Regression analyses. To analyze the effects of death reflection (death or no death) and value orientation on our dependent measure of greed, we first generated a relative score of extrinsic as compared to intrinsic values for each participant. Following the recommendation of Ryan (1993, 1996) and The analysis revealed a significant, positive relationship between value orientation and greed in that participants with a high EVO took more tickets than did low EVO participants, β = .33 (b = .04), p < .05. This main effect of value orientation, however, was qualified by the significant interaction between value orientation and death reflection, β = -.48 (b = .09), p < .05. The simple slopes of this interaction (plotted at ±1 SD of value orientation) can be seen in With this decrease in greed among high EVOs as a function of death reflection, we examined the spirituality question from the demographics sheet, which read, "on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being very spiritual), rate your level of spirituality." Based on the evidence of increased spirituality in near-death experience and PTG research, we thought this item could help shed light on the processes driving the change in greedy behavior. Results of this analysis revealed that there was a significant, negative relationship between value orientation and spirituality in that participants with a low EVO reported higher levels of spirituality than did high EVO participants, β = -.35 (b = -.04), p < .05. There was also a significant relationship between death reflection and spirituality in that participants who faced their death reported higher levels of spirituality than did participants who did not face their death, β = .45 (b = 2.24), p < .01. The interaction between value orientation and death reflection approached significance, β = .30 (b = .05), p = .10. Examining the simple slopes of this developing interaction Discussion We predicted that participants with a high extrinsic value orientation would demonstrate greater levels of greed when not experiencing our death reflection manipulation. We also predicted that extrinsically oriented participants who faced our death reflection manipulation would become less greedy. The results seem to support both of these predictions. Based on the greed findings, the significantly higher reported levels of spirituality among those participants facing their death, and the suggestive content analysis differences, we inferred that our manipulation did have the near-death experience, positive-growth impact that we predicted. Despite our inference about the effect of death reflection, there was some question as to whether the differences we observed had more to do with simply the effects of positive (control condition) and negative (death condition) affect on greed. In this vein, we also felt it was important to test if the open-ended questions, which we modeled after the positive growth inducing aspects of the near-death experience, were necessary to achieve the results we observed. STUDY 2 Method Participants. Fifty-six introductory psychology students from California State University, Sacramento (49 women, 7 men), ranging in age from 17 to 40 (M = 21.09, SD = 4.88), participated to fulfill a course requirement. 4 Most of the sample was Caucasian (41%), followed by Asian (18%), multiracial (13%), Latino (9%), and African American (7%), with the remaining participants' ethnicity unknown. Materials. We used the same 30-item Aspirations Index (based on To avoid comparing positive versus negative affect scenarios, all participants received the death reflection scenario used in Study 1; however, some of the participants received our standard open-ended questions (from Study 1), whereas the other students received questions not inspired by near-death experiences or PTG (e.g., "How could we improve the typographical appearance of the scenario?"). After reading the scenario, completing the questions, and filling out the demographic sheet used in Study 1, participants came across the same flyer from the first study telling participants about the raffle tickets, which we used to assess greed. Procedure. We employed the same procedures used in the first study; however, each envelope actually contained 22 tickets (instead of 20 as in the first study). We made this change to avoid any possibility that participants would make their ticket decisions based on the fact that 4 (wave number) was a multiple of 20 (eliminating the notion that 5 would be an appropriate number of tickets to take). After participants took their tickets, they were debriefed. Following data collection, we randomly selected a single raffle ticket so we could award a student the gift certificate. Results Repeating the steps used in Study 1, we first generated a relative score of extrinsic as compared to intrinsic values for each participant. Regressing the number of tickets taken on value orientation (centered) and question type (real vs. unrelated) revealed a significant interaction between our variables, β = -.38 (b = -.11), p < .05. The simple slope analyses of this interaction Discussion Based on these results, we made two inferences regarding our death reflection manipulation: (a) The drop in greedy behavior seen in both studies among high EVOs was not a reaction to reading a disturbing scenario as opposed to a pleasant one and (b) the four questions we patterned after components of the near-death experience do seem to be vital to the manipulation as a whole. An issue we will wait to address is the slight increase in greed among low EVOs after experiencing our death reflection manipulation. Although not significant, the replication of the increase was certainly not predicted. Still missing from our exploration into the validity and effectiveness of death reflection was a mortality salience manipulation to examine whether our manipulation was triggering behavior different from what we might observe using

Greed, Death, and Values: From Terror Management to Transcendence Management Theory

Research supporting terror management theory has shown that participants facing their death (via mortality salience) exhibit more greed than do control participants. The present research attempts to distinguish mortality salience from other forms of mortality awareness. Specifically, the authors look to reports of near-death experiences and posttraumatic growth which reveal that many people who nearly die come to view seeking wealth and possessions as empty and meaningless. Guided by these reports, a manipulation called death reflection was generated. In Study 1, highly extrinsic participants who experienced death reflection exhibited intrinsic behavior. In Study 2, the manipulation was validated, and in Study 3, death reflection and mortality salience manipulations were compared. Results showed that mortality salience led highly extrinsic participants to manifest greed, whereas death reflection again generated intrinsic, unselfish behavior. The construct of value orientation is discussed along with the contrast between death reflection manipulation and mortality salience. </jats:p

Limited time perspective, values, and greed: Imagining a limited future reduces avarice in extrinsic people

We explored the adage that "at the end of life nobody wishes they'd made more money", by inducing a limited-time perspective (LTP) in some participants. In Study 1, participants in the LTP condition who were high in extrinsic value orientation (EVO) became less greedy in a raffle-ticket-taking task, making them as generous as intrinsic participants. Study 2 replicated this effect and demonstrated the effect was robust to alternative explanations. Study 3 examined value reports directly, finding that LTP participants evidenced reduced EVO and were less proself in a decomposed prisoner's dilemma. Results are considered via an integration of multiple lines of research including humanistic, life-span, social-cognitive, and existential perspectives, with the conclusion that a LTP can facilitate in certain individuals a reassessment and realignment of their value systems and behaviors. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved