The Impact Of Death Reminders On Materialism

In recent years,with the deepening of the country’s reforms and the rapid development of the socialist economy,the economic level has increased rapidly,and people’s social attitudes and ideologies have quietly changed,which has provided a hotbed for the prevailing of materialism.As the backbone of national construction,it is very important for college students to cultivate and shape their good outlook on life and values.Therefore,the research on the materialism of contemporary college students has become a social topic of interest to many researchers.Mortality salience which refers to reminders or reveal of people’s inevitability of death.According to Terror Management Theory,in order to cope with the anxiety caused by mortality salience,individuals will attach more to their values that they adhere to.Materialism,as a specific individual value,can buffer death anxiety to some extent.However,the internal mechanism of mortality salience has not been fully explored.Based on this,this study aim to establish a moderated mediation model,to explore the relationship between mortality salience and materialism,as well as the influence mechanism of future orientation and awe,and to verify this model through two sub-studies.Study 1 used the correlation method,which explored the relationship among mortality salience,future orientation,awe and materialism through questionnaire survey.A total of 448 valid samples were obtained through offline questionnaires distributed to college students in 5 universities in Shanghai,and the impact of mortality salience on materialism and its mechanism were preliminarily explored by using Templer-Death Anxiety Scale,Consideration of Future Consequences Scale,Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale Awe Subscale and Materialistic Values Scale.Study 2 used the experimental method,and the causal relationship between the variables is further examined with university students as research subjects.In the experiment,194 participants were selected,the formal experiment that used a between-subject design of 2(death situation: mortality salience,Non-mortality salience)× 3(emotion state: awe,amusement,neutral).Among them,the mortality salience and awe level were controlled,and used a different method from the research to measure the future orientation and materialism of the subjects.To sum up,the conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The mortality salience has a direct positive predictive effect on materialism.Individuals who are reminded of death are more likely to show higher materialisttendency.(2)Future orientation plays a part mediating effect between mortality salience and materialism.(3)The sense of awe plays a moderating role in the mediating effect of future orientation,and moderates the second path of the mediating process.Specifically,the mediation effect decreases as the level of awe increases.