Citation

Hayes J, Schimel J, Williams TJ. Psychol. Sci. 2008; 19(5): 501-507.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. jhayes@ualberta.ca

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02115.x

PMID

18466412

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.

Language: en