The Influence Of Mortality Salience On Implicit Ingroup Favoritism: Response From Individuals With Different Levels Of Trait Empathy

Objective:The research is designed to investigate under the different situations whether it will make a difference or not that high/low trait empathy participants’implicit ingroup preference.Methods:For this purpose,our paper contains two2(trait empathy: high, low)×2(situation:Non-mortality salience, mortality salience) between-subject designs’experiments.Firstly, four hundred college students finished the IRI which is used to assess their empathy ability.Then,80participants with the highest scores and80participants with the lowest scores were chosen from all400people.In study l,we randomly selected40participants from80participants with the highest scores,and other40participants from80participants with the lowest scores. Both experiment and control group participants were primed by watching videos.After watching videos,they need complete a5minutes’distraction task.at last,they are asked to finish an affective SC-IAT. The remaining80participants(40high trait empathy and40low trait empathy)are involved in study2.The videos used as priming material and distraction task are the same as study1.But they should complete a cognitive SC-IAT,at last.Results:(1) After remindering of death, high trait empathy participants exhibit more implicit affective favoritism towards ingroup.(2) After remindering of death, high trait empathy participants exhibit more implicit cognitive favoritism towards ingroup.Conclusion:Mortality salience is able to enhance high trait empathy participants’implicit ingroup favoritism.