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The rise of proximity tourism since the onset of COVID‐19 has enabled individuals to assess their daily lives from new perspectives. Nevertheless, in studies of this change, scant attention has been given to the influence of government performance on the perception and behavior of proximity tourists. Drawing upon micro‐governance theory in conjunction with the two‐factor hygiene model, this study proposes a novel conceptual framework. The effects of pandemic‐related strict vs. relaxed travel restrictions on potential proximity tourists' intention to travel are examined alongside mortality salience as a moderator and perceived extraordinariness as a mediator. Two quasi‐experiments reveal a positive link between government performance and travel intention, especially when moderated by mortality salience. Relaxed travel restrictions, coupled with the performance of government protests, greater perceived extraordinariness, thus amplifying travel intention. This study offers pioneering empirical validation of government response and its impact on post‐disaster proximity tourism intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research demonstrates that reminders of one's own mortality can lead to materialistic and self-serving consumer behaviors. In contrast, across five studies, we explore a condition under which mortality salience (MS) leads to increased tendency to give away one's possessions—when the donation act is high in transcendence potential. We propose and find that consumers are more likely to donate their possessions to charity under MS (vs. comparison conditions) when the product is considered highly (vs. not highly) connected to the self. Moreover, we demonstrate that this tendency manifests only when transcendence is attainable through donation. In support of the proposition of transcendence as the underlying mechanism, the observed effects are attenuated under conditions where: (1) transcendence has already been satiated via alternative means or (2) the donated possession will not transcend the self (i.e. its physical integrity is lost by being broken down and recycled). The theoretical and practical implications of the work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have given considerable attention to investigate anti‐consumption behavior. However, empirical research tends to report somewhat erratic and inconsistent findings. Accordingly, the relationships between the antecedents, and the outcome variables of anti‐consumption behavior, such as consumer well‐being, remain unclear. Thus, to fill this void in the literature, this study integrates Attitude Behavior Context (ABC) theory and Well‐being theory into a meta‐analytic framework and synthesizes the extant literature on anti‐consumption to examine concrete relationships between the contextual and attitudinal variables, anti‐consumption behavior and consumer well‐being. The findings show that ecological concern, religiosity, mortality salience, and perceived behavioral control influence anti‐consumption attitudes and intention, whereas consumer well‐being is the outcome variable of anti‐consumption behavior. To investigate the possible reasons for the inconsistent findings, we performed a moderation analysis which suggests that country of study, product type, data collection period, research methods and sample type may cause inconsistencies in the findings. This meta‐analytic study contributes to the anti‐consumption literature. Practically, the findings provide guidelines to policymakers and societal organizations interested in promoting anti‐consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health preventative measures are important in reducing transmission of COVID‐19, yet death‐related thoughts might hinder preventative action. Using two online samples (N = 948), we examined how mortality salience (MS) may produce health‐related proximal and distal defenses relevant to COVID‐19, examining health optimism and appearance self‐worth as moderators. MS decreased perceived vulnerability as a proximal defense for those with high health optimism (Study 1), while those with low health optimism decreased perceived response efficacy of face masks and intention to wear a protective face mask (Study 2). Additionally, those with high appearance self‐worth displayed increased intention to wear an aesthetically appealing face mask as a distal defense to MS (Study 2). Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering how mortality concerns may channel health‐defeating and health‐promoting behaviors in respect to COVID‐19 and provide insight into how to produce sustained engagement in health preventative action to combat the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the concept of mortality salience in oncologists, akin to how metastasis is fundamental in oncology. Topics include the psychological prominence of mortality awareness, influenced by terror management theory (TMT) which posits that cultural constructs like religion and achievements buffer against the fear of death. This theory suggests that heightened mortality salience can influence medical decisions, potentially leading oncologists to opt for more aggressive treatments.

This essay explores the necessity of and limits of metaphysical thought, as well as theology's necessary interaction with metaphysics. Metaphysics' origin came through opposition to mythology, with which metaphysics is also intricately connected. Christian theology has a critical, but necessary, relationship with both. Metaphysics provides intellectual unity in the face of the diversity of human experience, which couples nicely with the mythological pantheon of gods. Aristotle's Metaphysics equated the divine with the unifying foundation of all things (ἀρχή). Metaphysics brings order to the world's chaos with a divinity that is not a subject, but a (neuter) predicate. Metaphysical questioning is necessary to human self-preservation but becomes problematic if divorced from other aspects of lived existence. Scripture itself raises metaphysical issues with its claims of God's oneness. Christ, and the communication of attributes that occurs in him, contrasts sharply with traditional metaphysics. This contrast is explored here in the tradition of Luther and Hamann. A re-abstraction of the concrete truth of Christ began with Lessing and Kant, and was brought to consummation by Hegel and his speculative Good Friday, which became a new kind of metaphysics. However, the truly Christian answer to metaphysics' longing for unity, is not Hegelian knowledge, but faith in the present, incarnate God's promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflections on meanings of life and death are rarely comfortable or linear, and can be triggered by crises and disasters. This study explores the meanings of dark tourism sites for residents, including their visitation motives, and subsequent reflections on death and life. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 37 residents of Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand, following the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. Our findings suggest that visits to disaster sites that have dark tourism connotations trigger mortality salience, prompting residents to reflect on memories of the disaster, which are often accompanied by deep and meaningful reflections on death and meaning in life, nostalgia for the past, and the significance of the sites themselves. We argue that dark tourism sites provide spaces for residents to assess and address socio-emotional distress caused by disasters. We suggest that interpretations of disaster-related dark tourism sites should memorialise death and disaster, but should also celebrate the lives of survivors. In this way, dark tourism sites can take on a more productive role in facilitating individual and community coping with post-disaster recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that the awareness of our eventual death is at odds with our evolved desire to live and that humans attempt to resolve this psychological conflict by investing in cultural worldviews that grant symbolic or literal immortality. The present studies examine the interplay between symbolic and literal immortality striving. Three studies show that, following a death reminder, only individuals who did not have a route to literal immortality (belief in an afterlife) increased how long they believe their culture (Canada in Studies 1 and 2, the United States in Study 3), will last by thousands of years. Study 4 demonstrated that this moderation effect cannot be explained by general religiosity; Study 5 conceptually replicated this finding using a different measure of perceived cultural longevity. Finally, Study 6 demonstrates that for those who were highly invested in their nation but did not believe in an afterlife, perceived cultural longevity was associated with decreased death anxiety. These results are consistent with the notion that people possess a primary path to immortality that follows directly from their worldview. The need for increased specificity in study design in TMT and the threat and defense literature more broadly is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examines the relationship between mortality salience and attitude, beliefs, and behavior toward organ donor registration. Participants (N = 484) completed a laboratory study in a 2 (mortality salience vs. control) x 2 (processing: distal vs. proximal) betweensubjects factorial design. Dependent variables included death thought accessibility, attitude, information seeking, and organ donation beliefs (bodily integrity, ick, jinx, and medical mistrust). Differences between conditions were examined with independent samples t-tests and χ2 analyses. Participants in the mortality salience condition reported greater death thought accessibility than those in the control; however, no difference in attitude nor information seeking (non-donors only) was found between the two conditions. No difference in attitude nor information seeking (non-donors only) was observed between participants engaging in distal versus proximal defensive processing. Participants in the mortality salience condition reported higher medical mistrust and bodily integrity than those in the control condition; no difference between ick or jinx was found between the two conditions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the terror management theory, people tend to favour their worldview and in‐group members after being reminded of death (i.e., mortality salience [MS] effect). However, inconsistent findings of the MS effect were found among Chinese people. In the present study, we examined the MS effect with Chinese samples and tested whether the effect would depend on participants' cultural orientation and relational self‐esteem. In Studies 1 (N = 227) and 2 (N = 221), we examined the roles of participants' cultural orientations and relational self‐esteem in their evaluations on moral transgression and/or perceived regard from people around after being primed with mortality (vs. dental pain) salience. We obtained the interaction effects of mortality salience, cultural orientations, and relational self‐esteem. The implications of these results are discussed in the context of Chinese culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments (Nstudy1 = 203; Nstudy2 = 177), using STD prevention messages and a 2 (mortality: salient, control) × 2 (freedom threat: high, low) design, tested the Terror Management Health Model and integrated its predictions with the Theory of Psychological Reactance to examine how reactance and mortality salience interact to affect risk communication. In Study 1, mortality salience mitigated freedom-threat perceptions but only at low threat to freedom and, consistent with distal defenses, reduced intentions to use condoms and abstain from sex. Study 2 examined the effects of mortality salience on proximal defenses. As predicted, mortality salience mitigated high levels of freedom threat, but, contrary to TMHM, it also reduced condom use intentions. These and other results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mortality salience, a key term in Terror Management Theory, refers to self-awareness of one's vulnerability and ultimate mortality. This exploratory study, based on psychology and tourism literature, clarifies the degree to which a visit to a heritage site of death and atrocities evokes mortality salience as well as the relationship between mortality salience and various dimensions of the visit experience. The findings indicate that not only was mortality salience evoked during the visit, it is also an important component in understanding the motivation to visit dark sites, the emotional experience of the visit, and the impact of the visit on visitors. We therefore propose that the conceptualization and management of a death-centered heritage site can be enriched by the integration of sense of mortality salience. Additionally, the high Cronbach's alpha suggests that the study can provide an initial basis for a scale to quantitatively measure Mortality Salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study addressed a topic that has both theoretical and applied importance, by examining the potential existential anxiety-buffering function of humor. Participants (N = 556; 55% female; M age = 37 years) completed a measure of trait coping humor before being randomly assigned to a mortality salience condition and a humor induction condition and then completing a measure of death-thought accessibility. ANOVA revealed main effects of trait coping humor, mortality salience and humor induction on death-thought accessibility in the expected directions. Coping humor interacted with mortality salience (F(1,439) = 14.47, p < 0.01) showing that low coping humor participants were more affected by the mortality salience manipulation. Coping humor also interacted with humor induction (F(1,439) = 8.94, p < 0.01) showing that low coping humor participants were more affected by the humor induction. Findings suggests that whilst trait coping humor appears to buffer the effects of mortality salience, those low in trait coping humor may benefit the most from interventions aimed at reducing existential anxiety via humor. The apparent beneficial effect of humor induction for individuals low in coping humor holds a promise of advancing our understanding of existential threat and, ultimately, providing a basis for interventions to improve mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationwide Insurance and Johnnie Walker Scotch aired advertisements that encouraged people to contemplate death. What are the immediate emotional and perceptual outcomes of such advertisements? With five studies, thinking about death was found to attenuate emotional reactions and perceptions, a novel finding in the literature. This attenuation was observed with neural and self‐report measures along with retrospective and prospective assessments of emotion and is an outcome not yet investigated in mortality salience research. Contemplating death dampened people's expectations of emotion in a future consumption experience and diminished the attractiveness of the experience. Similarly, contemplating death affected backward‐looking assessments of emotion, for example, when nostalgic memories are brought to mind. Importantly, this dampening effect of mortality salience was replicated with advertisements that portrayed death‐related concepts and attenuated emotional reactions to subsequent advertisements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the lens of terror management theory to investigate mortality salience effects on the evaluation of a brand from a developed country among consumers in a developing country. A survey was conducted among Indian consumers in which mortality was made salient for certain participants. Mortality salience showed positive correlation with favorable evaluations of the brand from the developed country indicating the effect of mortality salience on country-of-origin evaluations. Results suggest positive evaluations of brands from developed countries may augment self-esteem of consumers. This study highlights that, in emerging markets, consumers aware of mortality salience may not always evaluate a foreign brand negatively. The findings provide managers guidance for positioning foreign brands, emphasizing the prestige associated with these brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that evoking death‐related thoughts (mortality salience; MS) in individuals or groups can lead to stronger worldview defence and greater support for extremist violence. In three experiments, we tested whether an MS manipulation, and associated moderators, increased support for extremist violence. In Australian university students, Study 1 found no statistically significant main or moderated effects for MS on measures of extremist violence. However, participants exposed to the MS manipulation reported increases in conservative religiosity (belief in divine power). In Study 2, the MS manipulation had no significant effect on support for extremist violence for Australian university students primed with an antiviolent extremism norm. And in young Australian Jewish people (Study 3), the MS manipulation did not increase support for violence against migrants. However, there was an increase in support for policies that act to fight against violent extremism in Iraq and Syria in those exposed to the MS manipulation. Across three studies, we find little support for the hypothesis that MS results in increased support for violent extremism. Larger more methodological sound studies are needed to address inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding TMT and the MS hypothesis, at least in regards to violence and extremism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research demonstrates that personal mortality salience from annuity contemplation generates an avoidance response, reducing interest in purchasing annuities. However, theoretical models of mortality salience also predict an increased desire for investment in the future circumstances of surviving others ("symbolic immortality"), such as that provided by bequest provisions in an annuity contract. An experimental test confirms that those exposed to higher levels of personal mortality reminders exhibit a greater preference for an annuity paying lower income but with a bequest provision. Thus, the effects of mortality salience can drive annuity decisions, not only at the extensive margin (avoidance of any purchase), but also at the intensive margin (purchasing lower income by including a bequest provision). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the behaviors that revolve around collecting, the motivations behind these behaviors and the psychological benefits collectors receive from engaging in these collecting behaviors.Design/methodology/approach A thorough literature review and integration of prominent psychological and social psychology theories are used to propose a conceptual model, several research propositions and potential research questions for future scholarship.Findings This paper proposes that a collector salient identity and collecting motives drive tension-inducing social and solitary collecting behaviors and that these behaviors in turn reinforce the collector salient identity. Relevant aspects of the collecting phenomenon are explored, and included propositions provide future research direction to validate a proposed conceptual model designed to provide insights into a common consumer behavior.Originality/value This paper provides a broad conceptual model and explores several details of consumer collecting behavior as a basis for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to terror management theory, mortality salience (MS) increases distal worldview and self-esteem defensiveness by arousing unconscious death-thought accessibility (DTA). Although numerous studies support this theoretical process model, no research to date has ever found that DTA mediates the effect of MS in a single study, using the measurement-of-mediation approach. In this paper, we argue that the lack of evidence for this effect is due to methodological issues associated with the measurement of DTA. Specifically, measuring DTA primes death-thoughts and thereby disrupts the psychological processes that are typically initiated by MS. We provide evidence for this theorizing in three studies. Study 1 shows that merely administering a DTA task (vs. a neutral non-death-related task) increases distal self-esteem enhancement following a delay period (cf., a typical MS effect). Study 2 is a preregistered replication of Study 1, and found parallel effects, but only among participants who did not speed through the study. Study 3 demonstrates that whereas MS increases self-enhancement after a delay when DTA is not measured, administering a DTA task following MS eliminates this effect. Implications for understanding the implicit processes initiated in response to MS are discussed, and methodological recommendations for conducting empirically sound MS studies are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although men typically hold favorable views of advertisements featuring female sexuality, from a Terror Management Theory perspective, this should be less the case when thoughts of human mortality are salient. Two experiments conducted in South Korea supported this hypothesis across a variety of products (e.g., perfume and vodka). Men became more negative towards advertisements featuring female sexuality, and had reduced purchase intentions for those products, after thinking about their own mortality. Study 2 found that these effects were mediated by heightened disgust. Mortality thoughts did not impact women in either study. These findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of death interact with female sex-appeal to influence men's consumer choices, and that disgust mediates these processes. Implications for the role of emotion, and cultural differences, in terror management, for attitudes toward female sexuality, and for marketing strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of mortality salience and control threat on in-group favouritism. Three hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis one is that mortality salience and control threat would lead to higher evaluations of the in-group than the out-group. Hypothesis two is that, following mortality salience, self-esteem (but not locus of control) would be related to in-group evaluations. Hypothesis three is that following control threat, locus of control (but not self-esteem) would be related to in-group evaluations. Each hypothesis was supported. The findings indicate that mortality salience and control threat impact in-group favouritism via different psychological mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Life history (LH) theory provides a unifying perspective on understanding human behaviors as adaptive LH strategies in response to particular environmental conditions. Although several studies have examined the association between personality traits and LH strategies, there is little extant empirical literature examining how early life environmental conditions might be related to personality traits in adulthood. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between childhood environmental unpredictability, life history strategies, and the basic dimensions of personality as identified by the Five Factor Model. A total of 252 undergraduate students completed measures of childhood environmental unpredictability, a slow LH strategy, and personality. Structural equation modeling indicated that, as predicted, a slow LH strategy mediated the association between childhood environmental unpredictability and five personality traits. These results define the evolutionary origin of personality traits. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mortality salience (MS) has been shown to lead to derogation of others with dissimilar worldviews, yet recent research has shown that Asian-Americans who presumably adopt an interdependent self-construal (SC) tend to reveal greater tolerance after MS induction. In the present study, we demonstrated that Japanese individuals who are high on interdependent SC indeed show greater tolerance toward worldview-threatening other in the MS (vs control) condition, thus replicating the prior research. Extending this research, we also found that interdependent people's tolerance toward worldview-threatening other was mediated by increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the MS condition. These data suggested that when exposed to death-related stimuli, highly interdependent individuals may spontaneously activate their neural self-control system which may serve to increase tolerance toward others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies examined (what seemed to be) a relatively straightforward prediction that mortality salience would increase belief in a true self. This hypothesis was based on existing evidence that the idea of a true self helps people organize the world as well as evidence suggesting that people are particularly likely to rely on such organizing structures when death is salient. We further hypothesized that this effect would be pronounced for individuals high in personal need for structure (PNS). However, our results revealed a pattern in the opposite direction as predicted. While PNS did moderate the effect of mortality salience on belief in a true self, high PNS individuals were actually less likely to derogate the author of an essay suggesting the true self is an illusion (Study 1) and less likely to endorse items assessing explicit belief in the true self (Study 2) following MS. These findings contradict existing theory and evidence and suggest an interesting potential avenue for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mortality salience, or awareness of the inevitability of one's own death, generates a state of anxiety that triggers a defense mechanism for the control of thinking that affects different human activities and psychological processes. This study aims to analyze the effect of mortality salience on the formation of impressions. The sample comprised 135 women who made inferences about a woman's personality from information about her life (type of life, LT: positive, negative), provided through five words, all positive or negative, that appeared surrounding a photograph, together with a sixth word that indicated whether she was "dead" or "alive" at the time (mortality manipulation, MM: dead, alive). The results pointed to a more negative assessment of life (Dead M - Alive M = -1.16, SE = .236, p < .001), emotional stability (Dead M - Alive M = -1.13, SE = .431, p = .010), and responsibility (Dead M - Alive M = -1.14, SE = .423, p = .008) only when the participants had access to negative information about the person assessed, and she was known to be dead. We discuss the results within the framework of Terror Management Theory, and analyze the different effects that the manipulation of mortality has on the formation of impressions depending on the type of information available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a mortality salience or control prime, Black, Hispanic, and White college students read a murder/carjacking or auto theft trial transcript in which the defendant belonged to their racial/ethnic group or one of the others. Black and Hispanic, but not White, mock-jurors discriminated, more frequently judging outgroup defendants guilty. Mortality salience affected judgments about outgroup, but not ingroup, defendants, heightening perceptions of guilt in the murder case and decreasing guilty verdict preferences in the theft case. Mortality salience may compel derogation of outgroup defendants who threaten the cultural worldview, but not of less threatening ingroup defendants. The effect, however, seems restricted to crimes like murder that can sustain death-related anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used as a persuasive technology for attitude and behavior change. This paper considers Terror Management Theory (TMT), one of the notable theories that have not been considered so far in persuasive technology, and aims at exploring its use in VR experiences. First, we show that a VR experience can be used to effectively elicit mortality salience (MS), which makes TMT applicable. Then, we evaluate the effects of the VR experience on attitudes towards risk. Wearing a head-mounted display (HMD), participants explored one of two virtual environments (VEs). In a first group of participants, the VE represented a cemetery with MS cues like tombs and burial recesses. In a second group of participants, the MS cues were removed, and the VE looked like a public park. Results show that the MS cues manipulation changed the effects of the VR experience on users’ attitudes towards risk, as TMT would predict. Moreover, results revealed a relationship between MS elicited through VR and physiological correlates of arousal. Finally, we show that user's personality traits can moderate the effects of the VR experience on attitudes towards risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The studies presented in this article explored the relevance of death fears to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In Study 1, the relationships between death anxiety and a variety of markers of psychopathology were examined in 171 treatment-seeking participants with OCD. Moderate to large correlations between Collett-Lester Fear of Death scale scores, taken at initial assessment, and clinical ratings of OCD severity, number of hospitalizations, number of medications, and total number of lifetime anxiety-related diagnoses identified in structured diagnostic interviews were obtained. Study 2 used the mortality salience (MS) paradigm to examine whether experimentally manipulated death cognitions exacerbate compulsive cleaning behaviors among OCD washers. Treatment-seeking participants with OCD (66 washers and 66 nonwashers) were randomly allocated to either a MS or dental pain priming condition. Following priming, participants completed a series of distraction tasks involving skin conductance recording, before being offered an opportunity to wash conductive gel off their hands. As hypothesized, washers went to greater efforts in cleaning (as measured by washing duration and soap and paper towel use) than nonwashers. Similarly, participants in the MS condition showed greater cleaning than those in the dental pain salience condition. However, these main effects were qualified by significant interactions for both washing duration and soap use. As expected, simple effect contrasts revealed that the effect of MS on cleaning behaviors was significant for washers but not for nonwashers. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To identify patients with type 2 diabetes ( T2D) who may benefit from lower or higher glycated haemoglobin ( HbA1c) targets, based on readily available patient characteristics. Materials and methods Patients with T2D were included in the present study from the Second Manifestations of ARTerial disease ( SMART) cohort. Several patient characteristics were evaluated for effect modification in the relationship between HbA1c and cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, using multiplicative interaction analyses and stratified Cox proportional hazard analyses. Combinations of patient characteristics, as used in existing treatment algorithms, were similarly evaluated. Results Of 1753 patients, 323 experienced a vascular event during a median of 6.6 years of follow-up and 375 patients died. For the association between HbA1c and cardiovascular events, no effect modifiers were found. Body mass index ( BMI) and weight showed significant interaction for the association between HbA1c and mortality ( P = .04). Analyses, stratified for 25 kg/m2 or 30 or 35 kg/m2, showed quite dissimilar hazard ratios without reaching statistical significance. Combinations of patient characteristics used in existing treatment algorithms, did not influence the relationship between HbA1c and cardiovascular disease or mortality ( P = .46 to P = .92). Conclusions Using easily obtainable patient characteristics, whether alone or in combinations used in existing treatment algorithms, it was not possible, except for BMI or weight, considered continuously, to identify patients with T2D who had a differential association between HbA1c and cardiovascular events or all-cause mortality in our cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Terror Management theory, the management of existential insecurity critically influences human behavior. In philosophical schools, spirituality is viewed as a contrast to the acquisition of materialistic possessions. We investigated whether experimentally priming participants with spirituality-related, mortality-related, and neutral texts, affects materialistic attitudes among UAE residents. We did not find any significant differences in mean self-reported materialism scores between conditions (mortality salience vs. spirituality vs. neutral prime) using a repeated-measures analysis of variance (F (2, 58) = 1.143, p = .326, ηp2 = .04). In view of these surprising results, reflections on the nature of materialism in a diversified domain of cultural and economic viewpoints are offered, along with implications for the conceptual foundations of TMT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a novel saliency detection algorithm. The saliency of an image element is defined not only as its contrast to the background but as its similarity to the foreground. First, we extract background seeds as well as their spatial layout information from image boundaries to compute the background-based saliency map. Second, we generate a compact foreground region from the first-stage saliency map to describe the appearance and location of the salient object and calculate the foreground-based saliency map accordingly. We integrate these two saliency maps and further refine the unified one to obtain a more smooth and accurate saliency map. Each component of the presented algorithm is evaluated on the public available datasets and the experimental results also show that the presented algorithm achieves favorable performance compared to the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study explored the course, risk and mortality salience of a specific disability (N=242). Four job candidates were presented with varying forms of that disability; yet the results indicated ratings of work-related variables changed depending upon perceived dimensions (course and risk) of the candidates' disability. Furthermore, findings demonstrated a difference in perceived trainability and absenteeism when mortality was made salient. Implications reveal the potential importance of using a dimensional approach to studying individuals with a disability and relevant consequences for organizations when the course, risk or mortality of the disability is made salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Death anxiety is a basic fear underlying a range of psychological conditions, and has been found to increase avoidance in social anxiety. Given that attentional bias is a core feature of social anxiety, the aim of the present study was to examine the impact of mortality salience (MS) on attentional bias in social anxiety. Participants were 36 socially anxious and 37 non-socially anxious individuals, randomly allocated to a MS or control condition. An eye-tracking procedure assessed initial bias towards, and late-stage avoidance of, socially threatening facial expressions. As predicted, socially anxious participants in the MS condition demonstrated significantly more initial bias to social threat than non-socially anxious participants in the MS condition and socially anxious participants in the control condition. However, this effect was not found for late-stage avoidance of social threat. These findings suggest that reminders of death may heighten initial vigilance towards social threat. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The hypothesis that people respond to reminders of mortality with closed-minded, ethnocentric attitudes has received extensive empirical support, largely from research in the Terror Management Theory (TMT) tradition. However, the basic motivational and neural processes that underlie this effect remain largely hypothetical. According to recent neuropsychological theorizing, mortality salience (MS) effects on cultural closed-mindedness may be mediated by activity in the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which leads to passive avoidance and decreased approach motivation. This should be especially true for people motivated to avoid unfamiliar and potentially threatening stimuli as reflected in a high need for closure (NFC). In two studies involving moderated mediation analyses, people high on trait NFC responded to MS with increased BIS activity (as indicated by EEG and the line bisection task), which is characteristic of inhibited approach motivation. BIS activity, in turn, predicted a reluctance to explore foreign cultures (Study 1) and generalized ethnocentric attitudes (Study 2). In a third study, inhibition was induced directly and caused an increase in ethnocentrism for people high on NFC. Moreover, the effect of the inhibition manipulation x NFC interaction on ethnocentrism was explained by increases in BIS-related affect (i.e., anxious inhibition) at high NFC. To our knowledge, this research is the first to establish an empirical link between very basic, neurally-instantiated inhibitory processes and rather complex, higher-order manifestations of intergroup negativity in response to MS. Our findings contribute to a fuller understanding of the cultural worldview defense phenomenon by illuminating the motivational underpinnings of cultural closed-mindedness in the wake of existential threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background One of the validated prognostication models for predicting 30-day mortality in spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage patients is the intracerebral hemorrhage score. Aim To assess the prognostic value of the intracerebral hemorrhage score in patients treated or not with antithrombotic drugs. Methods We analyzed clinical and imaging data of 170 patients (82 males) consecutive patients admitted to a non-teaching Italian hospital with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage. We calculated and compared the intracerebral hemorrhage score of patients who were pre-treated with vitamin K antagonists or antiplatelet agents with those who were not. In-hospital mortality was our endpoint. Results Thirty-three patients were on vitamin K antagonists, 67 on antiplatelet agents, and 66 were on neither. Overall, in-hospital mortality was 35.8% and significantly higher in patients on vitamin K antagonists (59.4%) or on antiplatelet agents (41.7%) than in those who were not on these medications (20.6%; p=0.0001 for trend)). Median intracerebral hemorrhage score was 2 in patients with vitamin K antagonists, 2 for patients on antiplatelet agents, and 1 for non-treated patients. The intracerebral hemorrhage score predicted in-hospital mortality in all three subgroups accurately. However, patients on vitamina K antagonists and antiplatelet agents showed significantly higher mortality rates at intracerebral hemorrhage score ≤3, compared to non-treated patients (39%, 28.3% and 10%, respectively). Conclusion The intracerebral hemorrhage score has good predictive value in patients on or off antithrombotic agents. However, for scores ≤ 3, the intracerebral hemorrhage score significantly underestimates in-hospital mortality in patients on antithrombotic agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Life cycle inventories (LCI) of electricity generation and supply are among the main determining factors regarding life cycle assessment (LCA) results. Therefore, consistency and representativeness of these data are crucial. The electricity sector has been updated and substantially extended for ecoinvent version 3 (v3). This article provides an overview of the electricity production datasets and insights into key aspects of these v3 inventories, highlights changes and describes new features. Methods: Methods involved extraction of data and analysis from several publically accessible databases and statistics, as well as from the LCA literature. Depending on the power generation technology, either plant-specific or region-specific average data have been used for creating the new power generation inventories representing specific geographies. Whenever possible, the parent-child relationship was used between global and local activities. All datasets include a specific technology level in order to support marginal mixes used in the consequential version of ecoinvent. The use of parameters, variables and mathematical relations enhances transparency. The article focuses on documentation of LCI data on the unlinked unit process level and presents direct emission data of the electricity-generating activities. Results and discussion: Datasets for electricity production in 71 geographic regions (geographies) covering 50 countries are available in ecoinvent v3. The number of geographies exceeds the number of countries due to partitioning of power generation in the USA and Canada into several regions. All important technologies representing fossil, renewable and nuclear power are modelled for all geographies. The new inventory data show significant geography-specific variations: thermal power plant efficiencies, direct air pollutant emissions as well as annual yields of photovoltaic and wind power plants will have significant impacts on cumulative inventories. In general, the power plants operating in the 18 newly implemented countries (compared to ecoinvent v2) are on a lower technology level with lower efficiencies and higher emissions. The importance of local datasets is once more highlighted. Conclusions: Inventories for average technology-specific electricity production in all globally important economies are now available with geography-specific technology datasets. This improved coverage of power generation representing 83 % of global electricity production in 2008 will increase the quality of and reduce uncertainties in LCA studies worldwide and contribute to a more accurate estimation of environmental burdens from global production chains. Future work on LCI of electricity production should focus on updates of the fuel chain and infrastructure datasets, on including new technologies as well as on refining of the local data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviewers often face respondents reluctant to disclose sensitive, embarrassing or potentially damaging information. We explored effects of priming 5 states of mind on willingness to disclose: including 2 expected to facilitate disclosure (self-affirmation, attachment security), and 3 expected to inhibit disclosure (self-disaffirmation, attachment insecurity, mortality salience). Israeli Jewish participants completed a survey including a manipulation of 1 of these states of mind, followed by questions concerning hostile thoughts and behaviors toward the Israeli Arab outgroup, past minor criminal behaviors, and socially undesirable traits and behaviors. Self-affirmation led to more disclosures of all undesirable behaviors than neutral priming, whereas self-disaffirmation led to less disclosures. Mortality salience led to fewer disclosures of socially undesirable and criminal behaviors compared to neutral priming, but more disclosures of hostile thoughts and behaviors toward Israeli Arabs. Security priming facilitated disclosure of hostile attitudes toward Israeli Arabs. However, neither security nor insecurity priming had any other significant effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research examined whether people imitate the language style of others (i.e., the use of function words) as a form of liking when mortality concerns are salient. In Study 1, participants answered questions about death or public speaking and then engaged in an instant messaging conversation with a confederate. In Study 2, participant pairs verbally discussed a news article about increasing homicide rates or the rise in academic pressure. Next, everyone completed measures of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and relationship need satisfaction. The results revealed that, in comparison to the control conditions, participants exhibited greater language style matching (LSM) following reminders of death (Studies 1 & 2). Further, mediational analyses showed that higher LSM after mortality salience was associated with better psychological and social well-being (Study 2). Although the threat of death has been shown to make people more hostile and disparaging toward dissimilar others, the present work suggests that individuals, even strangers, may feel closer through language coordination following thoughts of mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We propose mortality salience – increased accessibility of death-related thoughts – as one previously unexplored explanation for the annuity puzzle, the low rate at which retirees buy annuities even though economists recommend annuities as an optimal decision. Across four studies we show that mortality salience decreases how likely individuals are to put savings into an annuity. By forcing consumers to consider their own death, the annuity decision makes mortality salient, motivating them to avoid the annuity option as a proximal defense against the death-related thoughts triggered by considering an annuity. Moreover, we demonstrate the robustness of the mortality salience effect through measurement and manipulation of the underlying process, and we estimate an overall mean effect size using meta-analysis. With this research, psychological theory can inform economic theory by helping to explain the annuity puzzle phenomenon that has challenged economists for decades. This research also has important implications for consumer welfare by offering insights into annuity choice and helping to inform the increasingly complex financial decisions facing individuals as they navigate the retirement savings decumulation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an active inference scheme for visual searches and the perceptual synthesis entailed by scene construction. Active inference assumes that perception and action minimize variational free energy, where actions are selected to minimize the free energy expected in the future. This assumption generalizes risk-sensitive control and expected utility theory to include epistemic value; namely, the value (or salience) of information inherent in resolving uncertainty about the causes of ambiguous cues or outcomes. Here, we apply active inference to saccadic searches of a visual scene. We consider the (difficult) problem of categorizing a scene, based on the spatial relationship among visual objects where, crucially, visual cues are sampled myopically through a sequence of saccadic eye movements. This means that evidence for competing hypotheses about the scene has to be accumulated sequentially, calling upon both prediction (planning) and postdiction (memory). Our aim is to highlight some simple but fundamental aspects of the requisite functional anatomy; namely, the link between approximate Bayesian inference under mean field assumptions and functional segregation in the visual cortex. This link rests upon the (neurobiologically plausible) process theory that accompanies the normative formulation of active inference for Markov decision processes. In future work, we hope to use this scheme to model empirical saccadic searches and identify the prior beliefs that underwrite intersubject variability in the way people forage for information in visual scenes (e.g., in schizophrenia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of women in combat has been a matter of intense debate and scrutiny in the United States. It received a new impetus in 2013 when then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered that all branches of the U.S. military repeal all of women's exemptions from direct combat units by January 2016. In this article, I review both academic and military research on women serving in combat operations and analyze several contexts such as ground close combat environments, rapidly changing war technologies, and terrorism. I also present a conceptual model that ties together research on terror management and mortality salience and shows how these constructs are linked to combat readiness and organizational and leadership effectiveness. Terror management theory has important implications for leaders in the present era of mounting concerns over war and terrorism as well as for women willing to serve in ground close combat units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments conducted during the 2004 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections suggested that mortality salience primes increased support for President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, respectively. Some interpreted these results as reflecting “conservative shift” following exposure to threat, whereas others emphasized preferences for “charismatic” leadership following exposure to death primes. To assess both hypotheses in the context of a new election cycle featuring a liberal incumbent who was considered to be charismatic, we conducted four experiments shortly before the 2012 election involving President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Contrary to earlier studies, there was little evidence that mortality salience, either by itself or in interaction with political orientation, affected overall candidate ratings or voting intentions. However, a significant interaction between mortality salience and system justification in some studies indicated a more circumscribed effect. The failure to “replicate” previous results in the context of this election may be attributable to disagreement among participants as to which of the candidates better represented the societal status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are individuals who voluntarily resist consumption affected by death thoughts? We looked at the impact of mortality salience (MS) on anticonsumption lifestyles. We found that high anticonsumption individuals were equally unlikely to consume in the control and MS conditions. However, low anticonsumption individuals were more likely to consume after death was made salient. Finally, anticonsumption lifestyles did not correlate with self-esteem, a known buffer of the effects of MS. Because MS did not change the consumption-related behaviors of high anticonsumption individuals, our findings suggest that consumption is not a relevant method for such individuals to recover their self-esteem. The findings also suggest that the adoption of an anticonsumption lifestyle buffers the effect of MS on participants' consumption-related behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigates the role of individual and intergroup factors in predicting Muslims' tendency to attribute domestic terrorism in Indonesia to an external cause (i.e., The West) or an internal cause (i.e., radical Islamist groups). The results (N = 308) showed that intergroup factors of symbolic threat and realistic threat directly increased the external attribution and conversely decreased the internal attribution. Within the context of the current research, symbolic threat refers to Muslims' perception that the norms and values of the West undermine Islamic identity. Realistic threat denotes Muslims' perception that the economy and technology of the West undermine Islamic power. The individual factor of Islamic fundamentalism, which has to do with Muslims' belief in the literal interpretation of and strict guidelines to Islamic doctrines, indirectly predicted both external attribution and internal attribution of terrorism as hypothesized, via the extent to which Muslims perceived the West as posing a symbolic threat, but not a realistic threat to Islamic existence. Uncertainty avoidance, a cultural dimension that describes the extent to which people view clear instructions as a pivotal source of concern to deal with societal problems, also significantly increased perceived symbolic threat and realistic threat, and this cultural dimension mediated the effect of Islamic fundamentalism on each of the intergroup threats. Finally, we found that the level of Islamic fundamentalism was dependent upon cognitive response, but not emotional response to mortality salience. The cognitive response to mortality salience denotes what Muslims are thinking about in coping with their own death whereas the emotional response denotes what Muslims are feeling about such issue. In particular, we found the cognitive response, but not the emotional response to mortality salience significantly gave rise to Muslims' Islamic fundamentalism. These findings shed light on the importance of combining individual factors and group factors in explicating the dynamics of Muslims' tendency to make attributions of causes of domestic terrorism. We discuss theoretical implications and study limitations, as well as practical actions policy makers could conduct to deal with Muslims' Islamic fundamentalism and reduce the extent to which this particular group perceives the West as threatening their existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dataset includes data from the two studies reported in our 'Terror Management in a Multicultural Society' paper. The data was collected at the psychology lab at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2013/2014 among Dutch-speaking student samples. The dataset consists of the measures described in the paper. The data can be used for replication purposes, meta-analyses, and exploratory analyses, as well as cross-cultural comparisons of mortality salience effects. The authors also welcome collaborative research based on re-analyses of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]