Mortality Salience Effect On Intergroup Trust:A Moderated Mediation Model

The mortality salience effect is an important assumption of terror management theory,which refers to the changes in attitudes and behaviors that occurr when individuals become aware of their own mortality in order to alleviate the resulting existential anxiety.Previous research has found that in intergroup context,mortality salience can lead to an ingroup bias in attitudes,where individuals’ attitudes towards the ingroup are more favorable than those towards the outgroup.However,the impact of mortality salience on intergroup trust remains unclear,as some researchers have pointed out that trust cannot be equated with positive attitudes and evaluations.This study examined the influence of mortality salience on intergroup trust,as well as the moderating effect of general trust and the mediating effect of future self-continuity,and established a moderated mediation model.Experiment 1 used the minimal group paradigm and trust game paradigm to test the effect of mortality salience on intergroup trust.The results showed that the effect of mortality salience on intergroup trust was moderated by individuals’ general trust: individuals with lower general trust had a higher ingroup bias under mortality salience conditions than under control conditions,while individuals with higher general trust had a lower ingroup bias under mortality salience conditions than under control conditions.Experiment 2 further examined the mediating effect of future self-continuity in the context of real intergroup relationships based on Experiment 1,and the results showed that mortality salience demonstrated different effects on ingroup bias under the moderating effect of general trust by reducing individuals’ future self-continuity.This study enriches the understanding of the role of mortality salience in intergroup relationships and provides supporting materials for improving intergroup trust and relationships.