Study Of The Influence Of Mortality Salience On Intertemporal Choice

intertemporal choice is a process in which people face tradeoffs and trade-offs between gains or losses at different points in time.The change of the state of the decision maker may affect the individual’s preference in intertemporal choice;the death reminder is a method used in the laboratory to arouse individual death consciousness,and the terrorist management theory believes that the individual produces psychology to manage their own death anxiety.Changes in behavior can be regarded as one of the most primitive forces of human behavior.Some researchers have paid attention to the effect of death awareness on individual intertemporal choice after the mortality salience.However,the current research content is relatively single,and only discusses the impact of mortality salience on intertemporal decision-making in the monetary field under the context of income.Some studies have shown that the time discount rate of income and loss is inconsistent.Then,in the context of loss,does the mortality salience have the same effect on intertemporal choice? After the mortality salience,in order to alleviate the anxiety of death,the individual appears to have an increased need for a sense of belonging and intimacy.Does this affect the social distance perceived by the individual in the psychological distance and influence the individual’s intertemporal decision making for others? It can be seen that there are still many issues to be explored in the relationship between mortality salience and intertemporal decisions.This study aims to explore the impact of mortality salience on intertemporal decision-making in the context of income-loss scenarios,the impact of mortality salience on self-others’ intertemporal decision-making,and the mediating role of social distance.There are two experiments in the study.The first experiment explores the mortality salience through the behavioral experiment method,and the individual changes the decisionmaking preference in the interim period under the scenario of income and loss;the experiment adopts 2(operation conditions: death/control)*2(scenario: income /Loss)*2(time: one month/six months)*2(amount: small/large)mixed experimental design,where the operating condition is the inter subject factor,the decision scenario,the decision time and the decision amount is the subject Intrinsic factor,the dependent variable is the percentage of immediate options selected by the participant.Experiment 2 explored the impact of mortality salience on self-others’ intertemporal decision-making in the form of a pen and paper answer,and examined the mediating effects of social distance;research adopts 2(operational conditions: death/control)*2(decision conditions: for themselves/ For others)*2(Amount: Small/Large)Mixed experimental design,where the operating conditions and decision conditions are inter-subject factors,the decision amount is the in-subject factors,the dependent variable is the percentage of the real-time options selected by the subjects and Evaluation of options attractiveness.It was found that after the mortality salience,the individual prefers to select the immediate option when compared to the neutral control group when making intertemporal decisions in the context of gains and losses;when determining for others,the individual relative to the neutral control group in the death reminder group,It is more preferable to choose instant options for others;social distance plays a role of full mediation in mortality salience and intertemporal decisions.The study of how death consciousness influences inter-temporal decision-making can help to enrich the study of the factors that influence intertemporal decision-making and further understand the defense mechanism of death anxiety.