Clarifying the function of mortality salience-induced worldview defense: Renewed suppression or reduced accessibility of death-related thoughts?

Previous terror management research has shown that following mortality sali ence, there is an effortful suppression of death-related thoughts, reducing death-thought accessibility. This is followed, after a delay, by an increa se in death thought accessibility, which instigates defense of the cultural worldview; that defense, in turn, reduces accessibility of death-related t houghts. Prior research has not shown, however, whether this postworldview defense reduction in death thought accessibility is due to an actual dissip ation or to renewed efforts at suppressing such cognitions. The present stu dy assessed these two possibilities by manipulating whether participants co ntemplated their mortality, had the opportunity for worldview defense, and were under high or low cognitive load. Results supported the dissipation ex planation by showing that high cognitive load had no effect on levels of de ath thought accessibility after participants defended their worldview in re sponse to mortality salience. (C) 2001 Academic Press.