How collective and personal mortality salience impacts antagonism against worldview-threatening others.

We conducted a study in Japan using terror management theory ( N  = 115) to examine these predictions: first, personal morality salience (MS) would increase antagonism against worldview-threatening others; second, priming to reinforce collective identity would be more effective to strengthen participants' sense of security and thus lower antagonism toward an in-group critic under personal MS than collective MS. The results revealed a significant interaction between MS types and identity priming. Participants were most tolerant toward worldview-threatening others upon awareness of a crisis threatening the group providing them collective identity. These findings provide insight into understanding individual behaviors during social unrest.