Empirical Researching On The Awe And Mortality Salience Effects

Awe is a complex positive emotion that mixes confusion,admiration,surprise and obedience.In the last few years,leading by the development of positive psychology,awe has attracted more and more attention of psychology researchers.Researchers have done a lot of research on the positive emotional valence of awe,and confirmed that the experience of awe can lead more pro-social behaviors.The mortality salience effect comes from the terror management theory,which refers to the behavioral effects of human beings when they are under the mortality salience.The mortality salience effect has been confirmed by a large number of cross-cultural studies.It's an effect that exists in all human beings.It can be said that every human being is born with a fear of death,and this fear will be translated into concrete behavior under reminding of unavoidable death.One behavior is seeking self-esteem.The other is worldview defense.The former one may lead to more risky behavior,the latter one may lead to racial discrimination.This study is also an empirical study on the positive valence of awe.The ultimate purpose of this study is to verify whether awe can reduce the death anxiety under mortality salience.The study assumes that awe can reduce death anxiety under mortality salience by improving one's small self.The study is divided into three parts: Pre-experiments provide reliability assurance for the experimental paradigms and materials of subsequent studies 1 and 2;In the first study,we investigated the effect of priming awe on small self,and explored the demographic dimensions of gender,age and education.The second study confirmed whether awe could reduce death anxiety under mortality salience by raising small self.The results show that awe can reduce the death anxiety of individuals under the mortality salience.Firstly,the foreign paradigm of arousing awe is verified.A video of a natural spectacle can be used to activate awe.Individuals show their small-self under the emotion of awe.Secondly,the level of small self has no differences between gender and age group.Finally,after arousing awe,Individuals show less worldview defense after mortality salience.That can prove our hypothesis that awe can reduce the death anxiety under the mortality salience.The theme of this study is inspired from foreign study which is about humility and mortality salience effect.This kind of research about awe is rare in china.This study used the latest experimental method from the latest studies overseas.In addition,the research subjects were recruited Chengdu local community of normal people.Therefore,the subjects are more general.The result of this study is also a supplement of the studies of awe and the studies of mortality salience.