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Abstract
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Deep in our consciousness, we all know that we will die someday. The management of mortality and death-related emotions influence our behavior profoundly. Terror Management Theory (TMT) and Death Reflection (DR) theory postulate different directions to manage mortality salience (MS; i.e., reminding people of their mortality). While TMT proposes a series of external defenses to restrain the fear of mortality, DR focuses on inner growth when contemplating our mortality. On the other hand, the role of emotion in managing mortality is a major challenge: Firstly, does MS lead to changes in emotion? Secondly, if MS does influence emotion, what are the main emotions that can be induced? Thirdly, what role do emotions play when mortality becomes salient? Based on the reflective function of sadness, the present study proposed the "sorrow management assumption", and hypothesized that MS would induce fear and sadness; death reflection would evoke more sadness, while pure mortality salience would evoke more fear. Next, we expected that fear and sadness would lead to two different modes of response to MS, i.e., "fear management" and "sorrow management". Finally, we proposed that fear and sadness would mediate the relationship between MS and external defenses, and MS and internal growth, respectively.
The current study conducted three experiments to compare the "sorrow management" and "terror management" of MS. In Experiment 1, 82 participants were recruited to explore the emotional changes during and after MS by using a variety of emotion measurement methods (i.e., micro-expression, self-report emotion, physiological skin conductance response, and heart rate). In Experiment 2, 152 participants were recruited. Two death consciousness manipulations (mortality salience paradigm, death reflection paradigm) were used to explore the different after-effects of two death management patterns (i.e., "sorrow management" and "terror management") on external defense and internal growth. Additionally, the mediating role of emotion (fear, sadness) was also explored. In Experiment 3, 182 participants were recruited to explore the different effects of terror and sorrow management. Sad and fearful background music was used to arouse respective emotions when conducting mortality salience manipulations.
The results of Experiment 1 showed that reminding people of their mortality led to increased sadness and fear, and the death reflection paradigm (vs. mortality salience paradigm) aroused significantly more sadness. The results of Experiment 2 did not find significant differences between the two different manipulations on the external defense (i.e., worldview defense, external life goal structure) and internal growth (i.e., internal life goal structure), but found that fear mediated the effect of MS on external defense (i.e., external life goal structure). The results of Experiment 3 did not observe a significant MS effect on the external defense (i.e., self-esteem striving, external life goal structure), but found that MS prompted the participants to attach more importance to internal growth (i.e., internal life goal structure) in sad (not fear) background music; emotion (i.e., sadness, fear) did not function as a mediator in the relationship between MS and internal life goal structure; background music (i.e., sadness, fear) functioned as a moderator in the relationship between MS and internal life goal structure.
In conclusion, these results indicated that MS did elicit sadness and fear, especially sadness, and death reflection elicited more sadness than pure mortality salience; fear played a mediating role between MS and external defense (i.e., external life goal structure); MS promoted internal growth (i.e., internal life goal structure) under sadness (not fear) background music. The current study expands the understanding of the role of emotions when reminding people's mortality, particularly for sadness, thus it is an important innovation and addition to TMT. The present study also provides empirical evidence for "sorrow management" of mortality, which provides enlightenment for psychological rescue in epidemics and other social disasters.
Language: en |