Creativity and terror management: Evidence that creative activity increases guilt and social projection following mortality salience

The present research, based on the ideas of O. Rank (1932/1989) and E. Beck er (1973), was designed to test the hypotheses that engaging in creative ex pression after personal mortality has been made salient will lead to both i ncreased feelings of guilt and a desire to enhance social connectedness. In Study 1, the authors used a 2 (mortality salience vs. control) x 2 (creati ve pretask vs. noncreative pretask) between-subjects factorial design and m easured self-report guilt. Results indicated that participants who were rem inded of their death and completed the creative pretask expressed more guil t than all other participants. In Study 2 this effect was replicated with a modification of the creativity treatment. In Study 3, the same conditions leading to increased guilt also led mortality-salient creative-task partici pants to express higher levels of social projection, an index of perceived social connectedness. Implications of these results for creativity, the int erpersonal nature of guilt, and terror management theory are briefly discus sed.