Exploring individual differences in reactions to mortality salience: Does attachment style regulate terror management mechanisms?

Abstract

Five studies examined the contribution of attachment style to mortality salience effects. In Study 1, mortality salience led to more severe judgments of transgressions only among anxious-ambivalent and avoidant persons but not among secure persons. In addition, whereas anxious-ambivalent persons showed immediate and delayed increases in severity judgments, avoidant persons showed this response only after a delay period. In Study 2, anxious-ambivalent persons showed immediate and delayed increases in death-thought accessibility after death reminders. Avoidant and secure persons showed this effect only after a delay period. Study 3 revealed that worldview defense in response to mortality salience reduced death-thought accessibility only among avoidant persons. Studies 4-5 revealed that mortality salience led to an increase in the sense of symbolic immortality as well as in the desire of intimacy only among secure persons, but not among avoidant and anxious-ambivalent persons.

Adjusting to death: The effects of mortality salience and self-esteem on psychological well-being, growth motivation, and maladaptive behavior.

“…Then, to assess varying levels of death-related cognition, we had participants complete a measure of DTA recently used in this way by Vess et al (2009). The measure is a word completion task consisting of 28 word fragments, six of which can be completed with either a neutral or a death-related word (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994;Mikulincer & Florian, 2000;. For example, the fragment COFF_ _ can be completed as COFFEE (a neutral word) or COFFIN (a death-related word).…”

The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations

“…Manipulations of variables related to perceived certainty (or examinations of people who vary in dispositional levels of these variables) find a reduced impact of mortality salience manipulations (e.g., Dechesne, 2002;Dechesne, Janssen, & van Knippenberg, 2000;cf., Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004;Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). Furthermore, people whose belongingness needs are sated insofar as they report having secure attachments (Mikulincer & Florian, 2000) or are seated with others (Wisman & Koole, 2003) do not show worldview buffering responses to mortality salience, although those whose belongingness needs are deprived do. In sum, the threats to one's relational framework elicited by mortality salience can be compensated by boosts to one's relations in the domains of self-esteem, certainty, and belongingness.…”

The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideologies, and Human Response to Climate Change

“…Experiments indicate that bolstering self-esteem helps to keep death thoughts at bay (Greenberg et al 1992b). Consequently, threats to self-esteem can elicit terror management defenses, whereas factors such as a history of secure attachment or thinking about one's own secure relationship have buffering effects (Florian and Mikulincer 1998, Mikulincer and Florian 2000, Mikulincer et al 2003. Experiments designed to explore distal defenses are intriguing because they tap into unconscious motivation in compelling ways, asking whether interventions (primes) that increase mortality salience also increase the individual's striving for self-esteem, defense of his or her own world view, antagonism toward outgroups, and idealization of lovers and leaders.…”