Browsing by Subject "Death -- Psychological aspects"
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- ItemDeath, Isolation, and Culture: Testing the Validities of Terror Management Theory and Coalitional Psychology(2006) Ing, Jennifer; Le, Benjamin; Sternberg, WendyTwo empirical studies attempted 1) to compare the validities of terror management theory and coalitional psychology, 2) to extend past research on cultural influences on cognition, and 3) to examine the effects of mortality and social isolation salience on cognition. Experiment 1 examined the effects of cultural (collectivism or individualism) priming and salience (mortality, social isolation, or neutral) priming on performance on a field-dependence task and a causal attribution task. The results revealed no significant effects for the field-dependence task but a significant cultural priming effect on the attribution task. Experiment 2 examined the effects of cultural priming and salience priming on mortality, social isolation, or fear-thought accessibility as measured through a word completion task. The only significant effect that emerged was one of salience priming in which the neutral salience condition showed a greater accessibility for social isolation words. The implications of these results for both past and future research are discussed.
- ItemGroup Dynamics, Religious Group Relations and Terror Management Theory(2016) Terman, Mikhail; Le, BenjaminConflict between religious groups has been a predominant theme throughout human history. Given this legacy, it is important to understand why religion has proved to be such a powerful force in inciting conflict, especially given that religious teachings often call for their followers to treat others with love and kindness. Considering the propensity of human beings to engage in violent action against people of different religious groups, it is vital to examine the ways in which prejudice develops between various religious groups, and ways to combat the activation of stereotypes and reduce religious prejudice in people. Additionally, it is important to understand how and why religious conflicts can so easily escalate over time. Religious conflicts have continued into recent times as many of the conflicts in the world today involve some sort of religious component. Recently, the Pew Research Center (2014) released a report detailing hostility against religious groups across the world. Their report revealed that religious hostilities between groups have been on the rise during the last eight years. It showed that seventy-four percent of the world’s population lives in areas where there were high levels of religious restrictions, meaning that most people live in areas where government laws restrict religious behaviors. In recent years, the report revealed that more and more countries have had incidents with religious minorities (Pew Research Center, 2014). Indeed, “Incidents of abuse targeting religious minorities were reported in 47% of countries in 2012” (pg. 10). For example, Sri Lanka has recently seen Buddhists attack a mosque and forcefully change a church into a Buddhist temple. The disturbing practice of using violence to force people to follow certain religious practices “occurred in 39% of countries, up from 33% in 2011 and 18% in mid-2007” (pg. 11). These findings illustrate that conflict between religious groups is something which continues to be prevalent in the modern era. Religion’s role in creating conflict between groups is not entirely surprising when we consider how deeply intertwined religion can be with our cultural beliefs. Religion is a powerful motivator in the lives of many people. Steger, Pickering, Adams, Burnett, Shin, Dik, and Stauner (2010) explain that religion is useful in that it forms a fundamental part of many people’s cultural worldview which helps them interpret the meaning of their existence. Thus religion serves as a fundamental part of our culture, which will be explored at length in this paper. The role of religion in dictating conflicts between groups is especially important today given the rising religious diversity in the world. Modernity has increasingly brought religious diversity to places where it did not previously exist. For example, the Pew Research Center (2015) projects that the most non-Christian groups (including unaffiliated people, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists) will grow in Europe in the next 35 years, while the number of Christians in Europe will drop over the same time period. With people of different faiths increasingly coming into contact with each other, more conflict between religious groups is likely, and thus it is vital to investigate how to best defuse religious conflict. Will increasing religious diversity bring even more conflict in the future? Or will increasingly diverse populations make people more familiar with other religious groups and lead to less conflict?
- ItemIs There a Fate Worse than Death? : A Comparison of Social Exclusion and Terror Management Theory : Employing Cultural Primes to Elicit Cultural Worldviews(2006) Rudolph, Stephanie; Le, Benjamin; Boltz, MarilynTwo experiments were conducted to explore the impact of individualistic and collectivistic priming on participants’ cultural worldviews under both mortality and social isolation salience. Participants were subjected to either individualistic or collectivistic cultural primes followed by one of three subprimes: death, social isolation, or neutral salience. Using an ambiguous word stem task designed to evaluate concept accessibility, Experiment 1 examined the cognitive relationship between death and social isolation. Results revealed no relationship between the subprimes and the accessibility of death and social isolation thoughts. Experiment 2 explored the extent to which participants assumed and defended their primed cultural identity on two culturally-sensitive, cognitive measures—the Embedded Figures Test and an attribution task—after mortality and social isolation subpriming. Although the cultural primes affected attributional style in the predicted direction (individualists were more dispositional and collectivists more situational), mortality and social isolation salient participants did not defend their primed cultural identity more than controls. Both experiments failed to provide support for either terror management or social exclusion theory. Implications and possible methodological concerns are explored.
- ItemThe Effects of Mortality Salience and Social Isolation Salience on Individualistic and Collectivistic Cognition(2006) Polykoff, JasonTerror management theory asserts that humans have an inherent fear of dying, and when their death is made salient (mortality salience) they cling to their worldviews as a means to mitigate their fear. Coalitional psychology’s claims diverge from this assumption, stating that it is not individuals’ thoughts of death that cause them to attach to their worldviews, but instead, it is thoughts of being socially alone (social isolation salience). A study testing this assertion found no significant difference in thought accessibility between mortality salience and social isolation salience. Additionally, studies using cognitive tasks found that individuals from separate cultures (individualistic and collectivistic) think differently. The present study compared terror management theory claims and coalitional psychology claims on individualistic and collectivistic cognition. In Study 1, thought accessibility was examined using a word-completion task after participants were primed with individualistic or collectivistic thought, followed by mortality salience, social isolation salience, or neutral salience. In Study 2, participants completed two cognitive tasks, the Embedded Figures Task and the Self-Attribution Task, after being primed with the same saliencies as the first study. Results from both studies produced no relevant significant findings. The potential confounds of the study’s design and ideas for future research are discussed.