Citation

Lüdecke C, Baumann N. Scand. J. Psychol. 2015; 56(6): 678-684.

Affiliation

Department of Differential Psychology, Personality Psychology, and Diagnostics, University of Trier, Trier, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Scandinavian Psychological Associations, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/sjop.12243

PMID

26335149

Abstract

Terror management theory assumes that death arouses existential anxiety in humans which is suppressed in focal attention. Whereas most studies provide indirect evidence for negative affect under mortality salience by showing cultural worldview defenses and self-esteem strivings, there is only little direct evidence for implicit negative affect under mortality salience. In the present study, we assume that this implicit affective reaction towards death depends on people's ability to self-regulate negative affect as assessed by the personality dimension of action versus state orientation. Consistent with our expectations, action-oriented participants judged artificial words to express less negative affect under mortality salience compared to control conditions whereas state-oriented participants showed the reversed pattern.

Language: en