How collective and personal mortality salience impacts antagonism against worldview-threatening others

Abstract

We conducted a study in Japan using terror management theory (N = 115) to examine these predictions: first, personal morality salience (MS) would increase antagonism against worldview-threatening others; second, priming to reinforce collective identity would be more effective to strengthen participants’ sense of security and thus lower antagonism toward an in-group critic under personal MS than collective MS. The results revealed a significant interaction between MS types and identity priming. Participants were most tolerant toward worldview-threatening others upon awareness of a crisis threatening the group providing them collective identity. These findings provide insight into understanding individual behaviors during social unrest.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Miura Asako and Associate Professor Watamura Eiichiro for their comments and advice on this paper.