The Possibility of Self-Determined Death Eliminates Mortality Salience Effects on Cultural Worldview Defense: Cross-Cultural Replications
نویسندگان
چکیده
Contemplating the inevitability of one’s own death can deeply affect a person’s subjective sense of control, eliciting symbolic responses to restore control through cultural worldview defense. Research supporting this perspective has shown that reminders of one’s own death (i.e., uncontrollable death) can increase worldview defense, whereas self-determined dying (i.e., controllable death) does not (Fritsche, Jonas, & Fankhänel, 2008). To date, all supportive evidence comes from the German culture and it remains unclear whether this effect can be replicated in non-German cultures. We conducted two studies to investigate the cross-cultural validity of this effect and replicated the effect in both a highly individualistic culture (i.e., the United States) and a highly collectivistic culture (i.e., China). The increased ingroup identification observed after reminders of uncontrollable death supports the model of group-based control.
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