Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of Terror Management Theory

Disentangling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests on implicit anti-Black bias

Terror Management Theory (TMT) holds that mortal threats bolster people's desire to support their worldviews, which may contribute to increased outgroup bias. In 2020, two events likely increased mortality salience and death anxiety: COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that followed George Floyd's murder. We used Project Implicit data to investigate their impact on implicit anti-Black bias, controlling for demographic variables. Study 1 (N = 82,639) found a decrease in anti-Black bias from April 1-May 20, 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, indicating that increased mortality salience amid the pandemic failed to increase anti-Black bias. Study 2 (N = 96,957) examined anti-Black bias and death anxiety across two seven-week periods prior to (April 1-May 20, 2020) and during the BLM protests (May 27-July 15, 2020). Death anxiety increased during the protests, while anti-Black bias decreased. Conservatives showed no link between death anxiety and anti-Black bias, yet showed a decrease in bias once the protests began. Liberals showed the TMT-predicted relation between death anxiety and increased bias, however this relation weakened during the protests. Notably, these attitude changes in the context of a mass social movement differ from predominant conservative shift and worldview defense patterns in prior work on attitude change amid social crisis. Collectively, our results failed to link mortality salience with outgroup bias but suggest a role for other factors including social movements, intergroup empathy, and social solidarity in reducing bias.

An Investigation Into the Unconscious Influence of Mortality Salience Upon Sentencing Decisions

This study aimed to explore if unconscious awareness of death influences the harshness of offender sentencing. According to Terror Management Theory death is anxiety-provoking, and self-esteem and a belief in a shared cultural worldview keep anxiety at bay. When these factors are challenged then death awareness increases. These dynamics could be relevant in a court setting in which judges have to make decisions regarding offenders who may have different world views and in cases that trigger the awareness of mortality. We used subliminal priming to activate the awareness of death and recorded the effect it had on decision-making against a hypothetical offender. Participants (N = 303) were recruited and randomly assigned to either an experimental mortality condition or a neutral control condition. Analysis revealed that death-related subliminal priming brought about harsher sentencing effects than the control. The results suggest that subconscious awareness of death may bias decision-making when sentencing.

Exposure to the Death of Others during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Growing Mistrust in Medical Institutions as a Result of Personal Loss

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

The prominence of death during the COVID-19 pandemic was heightened by the potential of personally knowing someone who lost their life to the virus. The terror management theory (TMT) suggests that the salient presence of death has a pronounced effect on behavior and may result in the ossification of beliefs and actions aligned with one's worldview (i.e., the mortality salience hypothesis). In this study, we evaluated how death exposure early in the COVID-19 pandemic could enact the process of firming up held beliefs and attitudes related to health and safety. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that exposure to a personal loss during the pandemic would strengthen participants' baseline attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 safety guidelines.

METHOD

Data were analyzed from a prospective, regional survey administered at two time points during the pandemic, June-July 2020 and May 2021, in five United States northeastern states. Baseline and follow-up surveys were administered approximately 12 months apart, with adherence to public guidance and death exposure measured at both timepoints and other safety measures at follow-up only.

FINDINGS

Our results indicated that there were significant main effects of death exposure on guideline adherence and support for COVID-related public policy. Contrary to the mortality salience hypothesis, death exposures after baseline were related to higher medical mistrust at follow-up for those high in adherence at baseline, rather than those with low adherence.

CONCLUSION

Our results offer some conflicting evidence to the mortality salience hypothesis. Rather than entrench people in their worldviews, death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to sway people away from their initial stances. This finding has important implications for TMT literature and for the COVID-19 pandemic response.