Control The Role Of Motivation In Death Highlighting Effect Research

Mortality salience effect is one of the most important assumptions ofTerror Management Theory(TMT), it believes that the death-relatedthoughts will strengthen the individuals worldview defense. ManyWestern studies have shown that: when individuals think of their own isbound to die, they will make a more positive response to the individualswho support their worldview and a more negative reactions to thepeople who does not support their worldview. Uncertaintymanagement model make a new interpretation of mortality salienceeffect, pointing out that previous studies ignored the impact of theindividuals sense of uncertainty on the defensive behavior andindividuals probably feel a sense of uncertainty at the thought of death.This article integrates TMT and uncertainty management model. On theone hand, it will explore the applicability of the TMT to Chinese subjects,on the other hand, stripping off uncertainty from mortality is beneficialto explore the cause of mortality salience effect.In this study, subjects were randomly divided into three groups. Theexperimental group were asked to think and answer severalopen-ended questions on mortality, which was similar with the westerntraditional treatment. The control group were asked to think and answerseveral open-ended questions about their suicide. The differencebetween these two groups is whether the subjects can control their owndeath. The neutral group were asked to answer several open-endedquestions about TV shows.In study1, the result showed that compared to the neutral group,the experimental and control groups have expressed more positiveresponse to the one who support their worldview. Differently withWestern findings, Chinese subjects did not show more negativereactions to those who don’t agree with the cultural worldview. But there is no significant difference between the experimental and controlgroups. The study2showed that the results in the first study was not dueto the difference of cognitive accessibility of death-related thoughts. Instudy3, we took the IAT, a implicit paradigm to measure the threegroups’ control motivation. And the results show that the experimentaland control groups were significantly higher than the neutral group,and there was a significant difference between the experimental andcontrol group.These results suggest that:1.TMT has some applicability in China, but Chinese subjects also hasits own characteristics, which may be related to Chinese culture.2. Causing mortality salience effect is not death itself, but a sense ofuncertainty.3. Mortality salience effect is an implicit cognition.