Sympathy for the devil: Evidence that reminding whites of their mortality promotes more favorable reactions to white racists

Terror management research has often shown that after reminders of mortalit y people show greater investment in and support for groups to which they be long. The question for the present research was whether or not this would e xtend to Euro American investment in their identification as White. Althoug h it seemed unlikely that White participants would directly exhibit increas ed identification as Whites, we hypothesized that mortality salience would increase sympathy for other Whites who expressed racial pride or favoritism toward Whites. In support of the hypothesis, a White person expressing pri de in his race was viewed by White participants as particularly racist rela tive to a Black person who does so in Study 1, but was deemed less racist a fter White participants were reminded of their own mortality in Study 2. Si milarly, in Study 3, White participants rated an explicitly racist White em ployer as less racist when they were reminded beforehand of their own morta lity. The results were discussed in terms of implications for affiliation w ith racist ideologies and terror management defenses.