A function of form: terror management and structuring the social world

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Existential Psychology

Background:

• Lay epistemology theory explores how people form beliefs.
• Terror management theory posits that awareness of mortality drives psychological defenses.
• Structuring social information simplifies the environment and can serve psychological needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test a terror management analysis of the psychological function of structuring social information.
• To investigate if simple, benign social interpretations help manage death-related anxiety.

Main Methods:

• Seven studies were conducted, manipulating mortality salience (MS) and measuring personal need for structure (PNS).
• Studies 1-4 examined effects on primacy effects, reliance on representative information, and preferences for behavioral consistency and interpersonal balance.
• Studies 5-7 focused on MS effects on preferences for just-world and benevolent social order interpretations.

Main Results:

• Mortality salience (MS) exaggerated primacy effects and reliance on representative information.
• MS decreased preference for inconsistent targets and increased preference for interpersonal balance among those high in personal need for structure (PNS).
• MS increased high-PNS participants' preference for interpretations of a just world and benevolent social causality.

Conclusions:

• Simple interpretations of social information serve to manage death-related anxiety.
• Mortality salience enhances the tendency to seek simple, stable, and positive social structures.
• Personal need for structure moderates the effects of mortality salience on social cognition and interpretation.