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Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects

of mortality salience on reactions to those who
threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.
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Greenberg, Jeff Pyszczynski, Tom Solomon, Sheldon Rosenblatt, Abram Veeder,

Mitchell Kirkland, Shari Lyon, Deborah

Citation
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D.
(1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions
to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 58(2), 308-318.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.2.308

Abstract
Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis, derived from terror management
theory, that reminding people of their mortality increases attraction to those who consensually
validate their beliefs and decreases attraction to those who threaten their beliefs. In Study 1,
subjects with a Christian religious background were asked to form impressions of Christian and
Jewish target persons. Before doing so, mortality was made salient to half of the subjects. In
support of predictions, mortality salience led to more positive evaluations of the in-group member
(the Christian) and more negative evaluations of the out-group member (the Jew). In Study 2,
mortality salience led to especially negative evaluations of an attitudinally dissimilar other, but
only among subjects high in authoritarianism. In Study 3, mortality salience led to especially
positive reactions to someone who directly praised subjects' cultural worldviews and especially
negative reactions to someone who criticized them. The implications of these findings for
understanding in-group favoritism, prejudice, and intolerance of deviance are discussed.
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