Study Of Mortality Salience’s Influence On Intertemporal Choice And Time Perception

Death thought is how people face the fact that their death is unavoidable. Mortality salience is one of the most common used paradigm to arouse death thought. At the same time, people make choices every day, one of the most common type of decision making is intertemporal choice. Intertemporal choice is the decision of different results at different time. Since it involves prepare choices at different time point, intertemporal choice is related to time perception. In this study I reviewed the theories and paradigms of death psychology, time perception and intertemporal choice. There is no research at present puts death thoughts and intertemporal choice together to uncover the relationships between them. And most of the studies about death and time perception only involved comparing the time perception of different age subjects, not arouse death thoughts directly.The current study presents 3 experiments to demonstrate the influences of death thoughts on intertemporal choice and time perception. Mortality salience paradigm was used in both experiments to directly arouse death thoughts. In experiment 1 subjects were asked to mark their life length on a line and in experiment 2 subjects report the subjective time of the stimuli to measure time perception. Zimbardo perspective time inventory was used to measured time perspective. Subjects were randomly assigned to mortality salience group or control group. And in intertemporal choice the amounts included big, median and small amount which was within-subject variable. Experiment 3 was identical with experiment 2 except for the way of arousing death thoughts. In this experiment anticipated life span feedback was used to examine wether it can make subjects to think about life and become more rational as mortality salience paradigm.The study concludes that:(1) Mortality salience group underestimated the periods stimulus presented, which meant their time past faster than control group; (2) Mortality salience group had a smaller discounting rate; death thoughts evoked reflections about their own life and the reorganization of their life objectives which led to the preference of future; (3) Mortality salience group had higher scores in "future" and "transcendental future"’; they had stronger believes that there are other forms of life after death and they were more focused on future; (4) Unlike mortality salience, anticipated life span feedback did not arouse life reflection and reorganization, only reminded the short time of life, therefore feedback group had higher discounting rate than no feedback group, prefer now.Corresponding with previous study, we found that mortality salience group considered their deaths closer comparing with control group and they tended to underestimate time. They also had lower discounting rats, preferred future in intertemporal choice. Aligned with previous studies (Suo, Zhang, Zhao, & Li,2014; Wittmann, & Paulus,2008), those participants who underestimated time were more patient and preferred future. Results of the current study provided more support for the close relations of time perception and intertemporal choice. We also found that remind of anticipated life span were not related with time underestimation, and it made subjects prefer now in intertemporal choice. Our results support death growth theory. The current study provided evidence of death growth. Arousing of death thoughts can evoke individuals’life reflection and reorganization of life objectives, and these further make people pay more attention to future and gain stronger ability of delaying gratification.