University of AlbertaUniversity of AlbertaUniversity of Alberta

The Effect of Worldview Threat on Death Thought AccessibilityThe Effect of Worldview Threat on Death Thought AccessibilityThe Effect of Worldview Threat on Death Thought AccessibilityJesse Jahrig, Joseph Hayes, Todd Williams & Jeff SchimelJesse Jahrig, Joseph Hayes, Todd Williams & Jeff Schimel

DEATH ANXIETY

Cultural Worldviews

Self Esteem

CULTURAL ANXIETY BUFFER

Worldview Threat ManipulationIn order to weaken the terror buffering effects of the cultural worldview, it was necessary to threaten many diverse aspects of Canadian culture. To this end, we used a pre-existing website written from an American perspective. As a control condition, a parallel website was constructed. This one, however, was designed to threaten an Australian worldview and was written from a British perspective.

Death Thought Accessibility Measure In order to measure the unconscious accessibility of death thoughts, a word-fragment completion task was used. This task has been used in past research of this nature (e.g., Greenberg et al.,1994). In a list of 20 word-fragments, 6 are designed in such a way that they can be completed using a death word or a non-death word. For example, participants saw the letters COFF _ _ and this could complete the fragment with COFFEE or with the death related COFFIN. The possible death related words were buried, dead, grave, killed, skull, and coffin.

MethodParticipants and Design Participants were 63 introductory psychology students at the University of Alberta. Participants were selected on the basis of their responses to 4 questions included in a mass-testing session at the beginning of the semester. These questions, which were designed to tap investment in Canadian culture, were "I am proud to be Canadian", "I define myself as Canadian", "I would proudly display the Canadian flag", and "Being Canadian is an important part of my self-worth". To assure that the worldview threat manipulation would actually be threatening to participants, only those who responded with a 6 or greater on a 7-point scale (with 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree) to each of the four questions were selected to participate in the study. These participants were randomly assigned to review either the anit-Canadian website or the anti-Australian website.

Terror Management TheoryTerror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) is a broad conceptual framework of social behaviour. The theory is based largely on the writings of the cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker (1973; 1975), who emphasized the central role that death plays in our everyday lives. Specifically, he argued that humans, like other life forms, have a basic instinct for self-preservation. However, unlike other life forms, we are capable of complex cognitive processes, which invariably lead us to the knowledge of our own mortality. This knowledge conflicts with our instinct for self-preservation, leading to the potential of major anxiety, or terror. According to TMT, a mechanism has evolved to help us manage this terror: a dual component cultural anxiety buffer consisting of self-esteem and a cultural worldview. The cultural worldview serves to structure the universe in ways that imply the world is orderly and meaningful. It also provides a set of standards through which one can attain a sense of personal value (self-esteem). Those who live up to these standards are promised death transcendence (e.g., If one lives according to religious standards, then one will live forever in heaven).

Upon completion of the interference materials, participants proceeded to the retrieval phase where they answered memory questions regarding the website materials that were reviewed during the study phase. The retrieval materials were 10 fill-in-the-blanks questions taken verbatim from the website. The answers to these questions were not included in the analysis, as this phase was merely included in the procedure to further buttress our cover story. Once all three phases were completed, participants were probed for suspicion, and fully debriefed.

Research in support of TMT typically involves reminding participants of their mortality and assessing the extent to which they defend their cultural worldview. Specifically, contemplating mortality motivates one to assert the primacy of one's worldview because this structure serves to buffer the anxiety associated with the knowledge of death. Interestingly, research has also found that death reminders increase the unconscious accessibility of death related thoughts (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994). According to TMT, when thoughts of death enter consciousness, people are first motivated to remove them from consciousness via suppression. However, removing death thoughts from focal awareness actually increases the accessibility of these thoughts in the unconscious (see Wegner, 1994; Wegner & Smart, 1997). Thereafter, these thoughts along with the attendant 'terror', need to be managed by bolstering the cultural anxiety buffer. In other words, unconscious thoughts of death are managed by enhancing self-esteem and faith in the cultural worldview.

The Present Research If unconscious thoughts of death motivate people to defend their cultural worldview, then it also follows that any weakening of the cultural worldview should lead to an increase in the unconscious accessibility of death thoughts. Specifically, we hypothesized that if participants are exposed to worldview threatening information, the accessibility of death thoughts should subsequently increase relative to participants who are not exposed to such information. The present research has been undertaken to test this hypothesis.

Procedure The study was presented as an investigation of memory for content found on the Internet. Participants were informed that the purpose of the experiment was to determine whether there is a difference in memory for material read directly from a computer screen as compared to a print-out of that material. Furthermore, participants were told the experiment would be divided into three phases: a study phase, an interference phase, and a retrieval phase. During the study phase, participants were presented with one of the worldview threat manipulations (Canadian vs. Australian). They were told to review the website as carefully as possible, as they would be asked questions about it later on in the study. Each participant reviewed the material at their own pace, and informed the experimenter when they were ready to move on to the next phase. Participants were told that the next phase was meant to provide some interference between studying and remembering. They were further told that since the actual interference task did not need to be anything in specific, they would be completing a number of task sheets that would ostensibly be used in future research. Participants were then handed a packet containing three "task sheets": the word fragment completion task (our main dependent measure), a filler word search puzzle, and the PANAS-X (our mood measure).

DiscussionThe main hypothesis, that worldview threat would increase DTA, was supported. Results indicate that after viewing the anti-Canadian material, DTA was subsequently much higher than it was after viewing the anti-Australian material. It seems that the threatening content contained in the anti-Canadian material was enough to momentarily weaken the cultural anxiety buffer, allowing thoughts of death to more easy enter consciousness. Cultural worldviews serve to protect us from the anxiety caused by thoughts of death. Moreover, these structures work best when they are validated by others. When other people view the world as we do, we get the sense that our worldview is correct, and that it is therefore the "true" means of death transcendence. When people fail to validate our worldview, we must consider the possibility that we are wrong. If our cultural worldview is wrong, then it can no longer provide protection from our fear of death. More germane to the present procedure, when people come right our and tell us that our worldview is wrong then we are particularly threatened. In such cases people may go to great lengths to defend and spread their worldviews in order to validate them. Such measures taken can range from discrimination and racism to wars and tragic events such as 9/11. When examining such social behavior under the microscope of TMT, an understanding of the underlying motivations behind these actions can be attained. An application of the principles of TMT may come a long way toward predicting and preventing many human attrocities. It is important to note that the present manipulation was designed to threatened only nationalistic aspects of the cultural worldview. However, there are many other components that make up a given individual's worldview. Although our way of viewing the world is largely shaped by culture, idiosyncratic differences will immerge within any cultural system. For instance, a Christian may show an increase in DTA after having his/her religious beliefs threatened. In fact, the effect found in the present study would be expected to be amplified if more than one aspect of an individual's worldview was threatened. The present study was an attempt to threaten the worldview of a very general population of Canadians. Selecting a particular subset of people who are all strongly invested in the same set of specific values would most likely yeild a more marked result. Furthermore, the present worldview threat manipulation represents one manner in which the observed result can be obtained, that is, having participants review website material. There is also the distinct possibility that other techniques may prove more potent. Additionally, the word fragment completion task is just one of many potential ways in which the influence of DTA could be expressed. Other measures such as reaction time to death related words, or the interpretation of ambiguous text etc. could be used to determine DTA and observe its influence. In consideration of this, the present study may just be the tip of the iceberg.

To test our main hypothesis concerning the accessibility of death thoughts, an independent samples t-test was conducted on the DTA scores, revealing a significant main effect of worldview threat, t (57) = 2.165, p. < .05. The directionality of this effect was as predicted, indicating higher mean death thought accessibility following the anti-Canadian threat manipulation as compared to the anti-Autralian manipulation.

Results

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Anti-Aussie Anti-Canadian

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