Defending one’s worldviews under mortality salience – Testing the validity of an established idea

Abstract

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that mortality salience (MS) leads to more negative perceptions of persons who oppose one’s worldview and to more positive perceptions of persons who confirm one’s worldview. Recent failed replications of classic findings have thrown into question empirical validity for this established idea. We believe, that there are crucial methodological and theoretical aspects that have been neglected in these studies which limit their explanatory power; thus, the studies of this registered report aimed to address these issues and to directly test the worldview defense hypothesis. First, we conducted two preregistered lab studies applying the classic worldview defense paradigm. The stimulus material (worldview-confirming and -opposing essays) was previously validated for students at a German university. In both studies, the MS manipulation (between-subjects) was followed by a distraction phase. Then, in Study 1 (N = 131), each participant read both essays (within-subjects). In Study 2 (N = 276), the essays were manipulated between-subjects. Credibility attribution towards the author was assessed as the dependent variable. In both studies, the expected interaction effects were not significant. In a third highly powered (registered) study (N = 1356), we used a previously validated worldview-opposing essay. The five classic worldview defense items served as the main dependent measure. The MS effect was not significant. Bayesian analyses favored the null hypothesis. An internal meta-analysis revealed a very small (Hedges’ g = .09) but nonsignificant (p = .058) effect of MS. Altogether, the presented studies reveal challenges in providing strong evidence for this established idea.

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“…We also recognize that our effect sizes are rather small, an issue coming up with other, more recent TMT-based studies (e.g., Schindler, Reinhardt, & Reinhard, 2020). Though our effect generally replicates across two studies, further replication may be necessary to lend additional support to these findings and reconcile this issue.…”

Does Social Exclusion Improve Detection of Real and Fake Smiles? A Replication Study

“…We believe that directly replicating this study is important for several reasons: first, the high estimated prevalence of questionable practices in past social psychological research asks for direct replication of prior studies ( John et al, 2012 ; Simonsohn et al, 2014 ; Schindler et al, 2021 )—especially when not preregistered and when having used small samples as in the present case (i.e., about 10 participants per cell). Second, the article of Bernstein et al (2008) can be described as highly influential (more than 300 citations on google scholar).…”

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“…Political affiliation has been commonly assessed in MS studies because preexisting ideology could interact with MS in a way that demonstrates polarization (Chatard et al, 2020). When Schindler et al (2021) and Treger et al (2023) included ideologies to this end, the variables did not yield any significant interactions but assumed the role of significant predictors. Participants' political decisions seemed more informed by their prior ideology than their response to the threat induction.…”