SUPPRESSION, ACCESSIBILITY OF DEATH-RELATED THOUGHTS, AND CULTURAL WORLDVIEW DEFENSE - EXPLORING THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF TERROR MANAGEMENT

Previous research has shown that after a mortality salience (MS) treat ment, death thought accessibility and worldview defense are initially low and then increase after a delay, suggesting that a person's initia l response to conscious thoughts of mortality is to actively suppress death thoughts. Lf so, then high cognitive load, by disrupting suppres sion efforts, should lead to immediate increases in death thought acce ssibility and cultural worldview defense. Studies 1 and 2 supported th is reasoning. Specifically, Study 1 replicated the delayed increase in death accessibility after MS among low cognitive load participants bu t showed a reversed pattern among participants under high cognitive lo ad. Study 2 showed that, unlike low cognitive load participants, high cognitive load participants exhibited immediate increases in pro-Ameri can bias after MS. Study 3 demonstrated that worldview defense in resp onse to MS reduces the delayed increase in death accessibility. Implic ations of these findings for understanding both terror management proc esses and psychological defense in general are discussed.