The Effect Of Death Reminders On Intertemporal Decision-making: The Role Of Awe And Future Time Insight

Death reminder is a concept in the theory of terror management.It is a reminder of "the inevitability of death".Its psychological mechanism can awaken the individual's potential death anxiety through artificial activation.The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 has given everyone a deeper understanding of death,and research on death has become more relevant.Intertemporal decision making A process involving trade-offs between gains and losses at different points in time,in which the state of the decision-maker is an important factor.Some scholars have studied how individuals make intertemporal decisions under the condition of death reminder,but in terms of research content,it is relatively single and the research results are different.As for the influence of death reminder on intertemporal decision-making,the internal specific mechanism of action has not been fully explored.Based on this,this study will investigate the effect of death reminder on intertemporal decision making,and explore the role of awe and future time insight in this process.In the first study,292 valid questionnaires were collected from undergraduate and postgraduate students in Nanjing Normal University,and the relationship among death reminder,trait awe and intertemporal decision making was preliminarily explored.The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between death reminder and subjective value of recent options.Trait awe had a positive moderating effect between death reminder and subjective value of recent options.In study 2,a situational experiment was conducted to further examine the causal relationship between the variables using the death reminder paradigm.A total of 109 participants to attend a formal experiment,the experiment is divided into four groups,with 2(start death: death reminded/not remind)×2(start emotions: fear of start/control)of the two factors between subjects design of experiment,death is remind manipulation through death started paradigm,awe to start is to watch the video task,the dependent variable for future option subjective values.The results showed that compared with the control group,the subjects in the death reminder group had lower subjective value of long-term choices,that is to say,in the intertemporal decision making,the individuals preferred the small reward which was immediately available.The state awe could reduce the subjects' preference of even choices,that is,it moderated the death reminder and intertemporal decision making.The third study builds a mediation model with future time insight as the mediating variable on the basis of the previous two studies.A total of 115 subjects were included in the experiment,and a two-factor design of 2(death priming: death reminder/nondeath reminder)×2(emotional priming: awe priming/control group)was also adopted.The results showed that the mediating effect of future time insight was significant,while the moderating effect of awe still existed,and the moderating effect of awe also moderated the latter part of the pathway.Research Conclusions:(1)Under the condition of death reminder,individuals showed significant differences in their preference for intertemporal decision making.Under the condition of death reminder initiation,individuals preferred the immediately available benefits.(2)Under death warning condition,individuals' intertemporal decision preference was moderated by awe.Higher levels of awe can reduce individuals' preference for immediate gains.(3)The effect of death reminder on intertemporal decision-making is mediated by future time insight,and the moderating effect of awe is mediated by future time insight.