Terror Management Experiment
A terror management experiment tests terror management theory (TMT), which holds that awareness of one's own mortality creates potential anxiety that people manage by defending their cultural worldview and self-esteem. The canonical mortality-salience paradigm (Greenberg et al., 1990) experimentally reminds participants of death and measures increased worldview defense, such as harsher judgments of out-groups and stronger ingroup and political allegiance.
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Sources
- Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., Rosenblatt, A., Veeder, M., Kirkland, S., & Lyon, D. (1990). Evidence for terror management theory II: The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who threaten or bolster the cultural worldview. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(2), 308-318. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.58.2.308 ↗
- Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155-195. DOI: 10.1177/1088868309352321 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Terror Management Theory Mortality Salience Experiment. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/political-psychology/terror-management-experiment
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