Is Death a Matter of Indifference?

Alexander, Irving E.; Colley, Randolph S.; Adlerstein, Arthur M.

doi:10.1080/00223980.1957.9713074

Cited by 40 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Although possible, this seems unlikely for a number of reasons. First, there is evidence suggesting that anxiety about death is widespread, even among individuals who deny it on self-report measures (Alexander, Colley, & Adlerstein, 1957;Templer, 1971). Second, we have found powerful effects of mortality salience in a variety of other studies (reported here and in Rosenblatt et al, in press) in which authoritarianism was not considered; it seems unlikely that these effects resulted only from the reactions of the high authoritarians in our samples.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.

Greenberg¹,

Pyszczynski

Solomon

et al. 1990

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1,190

1,132

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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.Although there is great variability in the contents of the worldviews associated with any given culture, all such conceptions provide the universe with order, meaning, value, and the possibility of either literal or symbolic immortality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.

Greenberg¹,

Pyszczynski

Solomon

et al. 1990

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1,190

1,132

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Early psychological research has shown that people either express little concern about death (e.g., Middleton, 1936) or do not report what they actually believe (Alexander, Colley & Alderstein, 1957). Becker (1973) maintains that fear of death is an emotional manifestation of a self-preservation instinct that people must have in order to strive toward maintaining their existence.…”

Section: Why Do We Fear Death?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consideration was not given to the fact that people might not always have reported what they actually believed (Alexander, Colley & Alderstein, 1957). Since the majority of early research on death anxiety was psychoanalytically based (e.g., Meissner, 1958;Sarnoff & Corwin, 1959) and because anxiety was thought to lie below the level of consciousness, a number of projective techniques were used to identify death fear (Lester, 1967;Lifton, 1979).…”

Section: Early Psychological Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictors of Fear of Death and Self-Mortality: An Atlantic Canadian Perspective

Power

Smith

2008

Death Studies

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“…Dying is a taboo topic (Feifel, 1963) about which even physicians in a geriatric facility are likely to be unduly optimistic (Kastenbaum, 1965) and which produces avoidance by nurses in a general hospital (Bowers, Jackson, Knight and LeShan, 1964). University students are as disturbed by deathrelated words as by sex-related words (Alexander, Colley, and Adlerstein, 1957), and the highly acclaimed 1962 Broadway play, Gi/t of Time by Garson Kanin is unable to draw an audience, because even sophisticated theatre-goers cannot accept a man dying of cancer as a dramatic theme.…”

Section: Social Distance and The Dying Richard A Kalish Phd*mentioning

confidence: 98%

Social distance and the dying

Kalish

1966

Community Ment Health J

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To determine the relative degree of avoidance elicited by the dying, a sample of 203 college students were requested to respond to a social distance scale evaluating 14 ethnic and nonethnic groups. Male subjects indicated basically less avoidance than female subjects, and ethnic groups (e.g. Negro, Mexican-American) were less avoided than the nonethnic groups (e.g. drug addict, dying person, alcoholic). A brief discussion of the problems of mental health workers in their own dealings with the dying is presented.

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Is Death a Matter of Indifference?

Cited by 40 publications

References 8 publications

Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.

Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview.

Predictors of Fear of Death and Self-Mortality: An Atlantic Canadian Perspective

Social distance and the dying

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