I control therefore I am: effects of mortality salience on control attributions

Terror Management Theory posits that when individuals are faced with their own mortality, they use several defense mechanisms to reduce the existential anxiety caused by the thought of their own death. In this paper, we examined one such mechanism: Control attributions. To do so, we ran an experiment (n = 140) in which we manipulated mortality salience and type of failure (relevant vs. irrelevant consequences) with which participants were faced. Participants were then instructed to evaluate the possible causes of their failure. The results indicated that participants assigned to the mortality salience condition, compared to those assigned to the control group, were more prone to making controllable attributions. That is, even in situations in which individuals are motivated to avoid responsibility (i.e., a relevant failure), mortality salience increased perceived controllability. These results suggest that attributions might serve as a control mechanism to compensate for the sheer uncontrollability of death.