Toward a Biological Understanding of Mortality Salience (And Other Threat Compensation Processes)

Tritt, Shona M.; Inzlicht, Michael; Harmon‐Jones, Eddie

doi:10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.715

Cited by 49 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(91 reference statements)

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“…The biological underpinnings of mortality salience may be not mapped on a specific neural system but rather on a set of areas representing the neural reactivity to uncertainty [59]. It should be emphasized that death was not rated as the worst option in several of the measured circumstances.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli

2014

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Existential social psychology studies show that awareness of one's eventual death profoundly influences human cognition and behaviour by inducing defensive reactions against end-of-life related anxiety. Much less is known about the impact of reminders of mortality on brain activity. Therefore we explored whether reminders of mortality influence subjective ratings of intensity and threat of auditory and painful thermal stimuli and the associated electroencephalographic activity. Moreover, we explored whether personality and demographics modulate psychophysical and neural changes related to mortality salience (MS). Following MS induction, a specific increase in ratings of intensity and threat was found for both nociceptive and auditory stimuli. While MS did not have any specific effect on nociceptive and auditory evoked potentials, larger amplitude of theta oscillatory activity related to thermal nociceptive activity was found after thoughts of death were induced. MS thus exerted a top-down modulation on theta electroencephalographic oscillatory amplitude, specifically for brain activity triggered by painful thermal stimuli. This effect was higher in participants reporting higher threat perception, suggesting that inducing a death-related mind-set may have an influence on body-defence related somatosensory representations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli

2014

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“…In this paper, we have presented evidence from three studies that shed light on several previously uninvestigated questions that have recently gathered much attention in the existential threat literature (Tritt et al, 2012; Jonas et al, 2014). We found that (a) MS causes BIS activity, as indexed by right-hemispheric asymmetric activation in the frontal cortex (measured by the LBT in Study 1 and EEG in Study 2), (b) BIS activity mediates MS effects on cultural closed-mindedness (operationalized as reluctance to explore foreign cultures in Study 1 and ethnocentrism in Studies 2 and 3), and (c) these effects are particularly strong for persons inclined to experience discomfort when faced with unfamiliar and potentially threatening stimuli (measured by NFC in all studies).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Inhibition Underlies the Effect of High Need for Closure on Cultural Closed-Mindedness under Mortality Salience

et al. 2016

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The hypothesis that people respond to reminders of mortality with closed-minded, ethnocentric attitudes has received extensive empirical support, largely from research in the Terror Management Theory (TMT) tradition. However, the basic motivational and neural processes that underlie this effect remain largely hypothetical. According to recent neuropsychological theorizing, mortality salience (MS) effects on cultural closed-mindedness may be mediated by activity in the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which leads to passive avoidance and decreased approach motivation. This should be especially true for people motivated to avoid unfamiliar and potentially threatening stimuli as reflected in a high need for closure (NFC). In two studies involving moderated mediation analyses, people high on trait NFC responded to MS with increased BIS activity (as indicated by EEG and the line bisection task), which is characteristic of inhibited approach motivation. BIS activity, in turn, predicted a reluctance to explore foreign cultures (Study 1) and generalized ethnocentric attitudes (Study 2). In a third study, inhibition was induced directly and caused an increase in ethnocentrism for people high on NFC. Moreover, the effect of the inhibition manipulation × NFC interaction on ethnocentrism was explained by increases in BIS-related affect (i.e., anxious inhibition) at high NFC. To our knowledge, this research is the first to establish an empirical link between very basic, neurally-instantiated inhibitory processes and rather complex, higher-order manifestations of intergroup negativity in response to MS. Our findings contribute to a fuller understanding of the cultural worldview defense phenomenon by illuminating the motivational underpinnings of cultural closed-mindedness in the wake of existential threat.

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“…Future studies may be able to capture parallel antagonistic processes of inhibition and excitation coupled with the different meaning of the images that could account for effects associated with more general threat processing and more specific death-related processing. Accounting for both general and specific aspects of threat and death cognition will foster the integration of biological theories of existential threat (Tritt et al, 2012) with the most recent version of TMT (Pyszczynski et al, 2015). Low and high energy stimuli were paired to both D and T stimuli in separate blocks and the order of the pairing was counterbalanced across participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Highly relevant to the present study are alternative models that emphasise the biological implausibility of a unique and specific threat mechanism of action of death cognition compared to other threats (McGregor, 2006;Tritt et al, 2012). The few studies that investigated possible brain correlates of death reminders have thus far endorsed the TMT predictions.…”

Section: "I'm Not Afraid Of Death; I Just Don't Want To Be There Whenmentioning

confidence: 96%

Visual reminders of death enhance nociceptive-related cortical responses and event-related alpha desynchronisation

Valentini

Nicolardi

Aglioti

2017

Biological Psychology

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2 Highlights We tested whether images conveying death-related vs. threat-related content had a specific effect on pain perception and cortical activity measured by EEG.  We found increased amplitude of nociceptive P2 potential and oscillatory theta activity associated with death-related images, but no change in pain ratings.  We found increased oscillatory alpha desynchronisation associated with deathrelated images but no significant difference in visual evoked potentials amplitude. AbstractPrevious research suggests that prompting individuals to think on their own mortality affects their perception of painful somatic stimuli and related brain activity. Grounded on the assumption that reminders of mortality may recruit threat-defence mechanisms similar to the ones activated by painful nociceptive stimuli, we hypothesize that the effects exerted by linguistic reminders of death on pain perception and brain activity would be elicited by passive observation of death-related pictures vs. more generic threat-related pictures.Results showed an increase of the laser evoked P2 amplitude and oscillatory theta activity when participants observed death-related images. However, no change in pain ratings was found. Moreover, observation of death-related content was linked to increased oscillatory alpha desynchronisation but not to variations of visual evoked potentials amplitude. Our findings indicate that pairing potentially noxious stimuli with death-related images exerts a preferential modulation of nociceptive and visual cortical representations.

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Toward a Biological Understanding of Mortality Salience (And Other Threat Compensation Processes)

Cited by 49 publications

References 90 publications

Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli

Thoughts of Death Modulate Psychophysical and Cortical Responses to Threatening Stimuli

Inhibition Underlies the Effect of High Need for Closure on Cultural Closed-Mindedness under Mortality Salience

Visual reminders of death enhance nociceptive-related cortical responses and event-related alpha desynchronisation

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