The Possibility of Self-Determined Death Eliminates Mortality Salience Effects on Cultural Worldview Defense: Cross-Cultural Replications — Oak Academic Publishing
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The Possibility of Self-Determined Death Eliminates Mortality Salience Effects on Cultural Worldview Defense: Cross-Cultural Replications
Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Macau, China
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Institut für Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
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School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
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Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York, USA
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Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
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Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
1 Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Macau, China
2 Institut für Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
3 School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
4 Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York, USA
5 Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
6 Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
Contemplating the inevitability of one’s own death can deeply affect a person’s subjective sense of control, eliciting symbolic responses to restore control through cultural worldview defense. Re-search supporting this perspective has shown that reminders of one’s own death (i.e., uncontrol-lable death) can increase worldview defense, whereas self-determined dying (i.e., controllable death) does not (Fritsche, Jonas, & Fankh ä nel, 2008). To date, all supportive evidence comes from the German culture and it remains unclear whether this effect can be replicated in non-German cultures. We conducted two studies to investigate the cross-cultural validity of this effect and rep-licated the effect in both a highly individualistic culture (i.e., the United States) and a highly collec-tivistic culture (i.e., China). The increased ingroup identification observed after reminders of un-controllable death supports the model of group-based control.
KeywordsLack of ControlSelf-Determined DeathMortality SalienceGroup-Based Control
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