The effect of mortality salience on bodily scanning behaviors in anxiety-related disorders

Accumulated empirical evidence suggests that death anxiety is strongly associated with multiple mental health conditions. Despite this, few studies have experimentally explored whether manipulating reminders of death could influence the symptoms of mental illnesses. The present, preregistered study used a mortality salience design to assess whether death reminders could increase anxious behavior (i.e., time spent scanning one's body, identification with images consistent with poorer health, and intention to visit a medical practitioner) among individuals with relevant disorders. A total of 128 treatment-seeking participants with either a body scanning disorder (i.e., panic disorder, illness anxiety, or somatic symptom disorder) or a nonscanning disorder (i.e., depression) were randomly allocated to either a mortality salience or control condition. Following this, participants were presented with a series of images of various body parts, which purportedly predicted particular life outcomes, and asked to check their own body and select the image that most closely matched their own. As hypothesized, the results revealed that mortality salience produced an overall increase in all three anxiety-related behaviors. Further, mortality salience selectively increased scanning duration and identification with images indicating poorer health for individuals with a scanning disorder. This effect only occurred when participants were told the body part predicted a health-relevant outcome. In contrast, mortality salience increased intention to visit a medical specialist regardless of one's disorder. The findings support theoretical predictions that death anxiety may have a causal role in multiple mental disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).