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Exploring individual differences in reactions to mortality salience: does attachment style regulate terror management
1Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. mikulm@mail.biu.ac.il
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|August 19, 2000
Summary
Attachment styles influence reactions to mortality salience. Anxious-ambivalent and avoidant individuals show heightened negative responses, while secure individuals seek symbolic immortality and intimacy.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Mortality Salience Research
Background:
- Attachment theory posits that early relationship experiences shape adult interpersonal patterns.
- Mortality salience research explores how awareness of death influences psychological processes.
- Individual differences, such as attachment style, may moderate responses to existential concerns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the differential impact of attachment styles on psychological reactions to mortality salience.
- To examine how anxious-ambivalent, avoidant, and secure attachment styles influence judgment severity, death-thought accessibility, worldview defense, and desires for symbolic immortality and intimacy.
Main Methods:
- Five studies were conducted employing various experimental designs.
- Participants' attachment styles were assessed.
- Mortality salience was manipulated through death reminders.
- Measures included judgment severity, death-thought accessibility, worldview defense, and desires for symbolic immortality and intimacy.
Main Results:
- Mortality salience increased judgment severity for anxious-ambivalent and avoidant individuals, but not secure individuals.
- Anxious-ambivalent individuals showed immediate and delayed increases in death-thought accessibility, while avoidant and secure individuals showed effects only after a delay.
- Worldview defense reduced death-thought accessibility only in avoidant individuals.
- Secure individuals, unlike avoidant and anxious-ambivalent individuals, showed increased symbolic immortality and desire for intimacy following mortality salience.
Conclusions:
- Attachment style significantly moderates psychological responses to mortality salience.
- Secure individuals appear to cope with mortality awareness by enhancing symbolic immortality and intimacy, whereas anxious-ambivalent and avoidant individuals exhibit more immediate negative cognitive and affective responses.