The Role of Cultural Worldview to Mortality Salience

Despite the magnitude of published research on mortality salience since the inception of Terror Management Theory, notable omissions persist in the available literature. The purpose of this study was to examine those gaps in the literature by assessing the effects of cultural factors, affect, and trauma history on mortality salience in a sample of undergraduate college students (N = 334). Measures of cultural worldview, self-construal, affect, trauma history, and death thought accessibility were administered to participants randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Death thought accessibility was not associated with any variable of interest in the current study regardless of whether or not participants received a mortality prime. Participants who reported a more materialistic worldview and an independent self-construal reported more negative affect than participants who reported a spiritual worldview and/or an interdependent self-construal. A significant trauma history was found to be associated with a materialistic worldview and independent self-construal. These findings provide some insight to the role of affect and cultural factors to mortality salience, an area which has largely been ignored in the mortality salience literature.