mortality salience

n. Mortality salience is a psychological state in which individuals consciously think about their own death. Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon first used the term in 1986 to refer to a state induced to 
assess hypotheses derived from terror management theory. The theory proposes that the fear of death motivates people to maintain faith in a culturally derived conception of reality, or cultural worldview, that imbues life with meaning and provides the possibility that they will live on in some way beyond their own death. Greenberg and colleagues proposed that, if the theory is correct, then when people think about their own death, that is, are in a state of mortality salience, they should become motivated to increase faith in and conformity to their own cultural 
worldview.

The first and most frequently used method to induce mortality salience is to ask participants to respond in writing to a questionnaire that includes the following two requests: “Please describe the emotions the thought of your own death arouses in you” and “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead.” This method of inducing mortality salience was first used in a study in which municipal court judges were asked to read hypothetical case materials and recommend a bond for an alleged prostitute. The judges were randomly assigned to fill out the mortality salience questionnaire or not prior to recommending a bond. Judges led to experience mortality salience recommended a much higher bond than those not led to think of their own death. This finding supported terror management theory because it showed that mortality salience motivated the judges to uphold their worldview more fervently by punishing someone who violated the morals of their worldview.

Since that first study, many studies have shown that mortality salience leads people to react favorably to those who support one's worldview and unfavorably to those who violate or criticize one's worldview. Additional research has found that mortality salience affects a wide range of judgments and behaviors that serve to preserve faith in either one's worldview or one's self-worth.

To date, over 250 studies have induced mortality salience using a variety of methods. Mortality salience has been induced by exposure to fear-of-death questionnaires, gory accident footage, a request to write one sentence about death, a word search task with death-related words embedded in it, and physical proximity to funeral homes and 
cemeteries. These mortality salient conditions have been compared to a wide range of control conditions in terms of their effects on a diverse variety of dependent variables indicative of increased terror management. These control conditions have reminded participants of neutral topics such as food and television and aversive topics such as failure, uncertainty, meaninglessness, pain, paralysis, general worries, upcoming exams, and social exclusion. In the vast majority of mortality salience studies, the findings have supported the specific role of thoughts of mortality.

Studies investigating the cognitive processes instigated by mortality salience have shown that mortality salience first leads people to distract themselves from thoughts of death. This is viewed as a set of proximal defenses which serve to remove these potentially threatening thoughts from consciousness. Once these thoughts have been removed from consciousness, they tend to remain on the fringes of consciousness, or high in accessibility. The distal defenses aroused by mortality salience, which bolster the participant's worldview or self-esteem, occur during this later time, when death-related thoughts are no longer in focal attention but are high in accessibility. Indeed, similar effects to the delayed effects of mortality salience have been shown to occur immediately in response to exposure to brief subliminal flashes of death-related words on a computer screen. Study participants are unaware of these subliminal primes, so they do not make mortality salient, but they have similar effects because they put death-related thoughts closer to consciousness.

Mortality salience research supports terror management theory by showing that thoughts about death outside consciousness motivate a wide range of judgments and behaviors to bolster individuals' faith in their worldview and self-worth. This work thereby suggests that mortality concerns contribute to nationalism, prejudice, and intergroup aggression, as well as prosocial behavior and cultural achievements. – JG