TERROR MANAGEMENT AND AGGRESSION - EVIDENCE THAT MORTALITY SALIENCE MOTIVATES AGGRESSION AGAINST WORLDVIEW-THREATENING OTHERS

The hypothesis that mortality salience (MS) motivates aggression again st worldview-threatening others was tested in 4 studies. In Study 1, t he experimenters induced participants to write about either their own death or a control topic, presented them with a target who either disp araged their political views or did not, and gave them the opportunity to choose the amount of hot sauce the target would have to consume. A s predicted, MS participants allocated a particularly large amount of hot sauce to the worldview-threatening target. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors found that following MS induction, the opportunity to express a negative attitude toward the critical target eliminated aggression and the opportunity to aggress against the target eliminated derogatio n. This suggests that derogation and aggression are two alternative mo des of responding to MS that serve the same psychological function. Fi nally, Study 4 showed that MS did not encourage aggression against a p erson who allocated unpleasant juice to the participant. supporting th e specificity of MS-induced aggression to worldview-threatening others .