The Effects of Mortality Salience on Disgust Sensitivity Among University Students, Older Adults, and Mortuary Students

Abstract

The present study tested the Terror Management perspective on disgust by examining the effects of mortality salience on disgust sensitivity among 137 university students, 48 older adults, and 44 mortuary students preparing for a career in the funeral service industry. Participants were randomly assigned to a mortality salience, uncertainty salience, or television salience induction. Following a delay, participants completed the core disgust and contamination disgust subscales of the Disgust Scale Revised. University students reported more core disgust than did older adults and mortuary students. Women reported more core and contamination disgust than did men. Mortality salience led to increased disgust sensitivity among all three groups but only on a small number of items related to animals. The results suggest a limited role of terror management defenses in the experience of disgust in response to stimuli that remind people of their animal nature.

The Last Glance: How Aesthetic Observation of Corpses Facilitates Detachment in Grief Work

“…Thus, ritual procedures involve many actions that negotiate the relationship between the bereaved and the deceased, redefining the equilibrium between shared norms and subjective mourning (Grimes, 2014). Manipulation of the corpse is one part of this process, and it manages disgust and provides a new symbolic identity to the deceased, redefining the continuity between mourners and their communities (Bassett & Sonntag, 2010; Hallam et al., 1999; Thomas, 1980). The complexity of practices surrounding the treatment of corpses transcends all ages and all cultures, but it consistently has the effect of facilitating detachment (e.g.…”