The true self and existential structure? Unexpected effects of mortality salience and personal need for structure on belief in a true self

Abstract

Two studies examined (what seemed to be) a relatively straightforward prediction that mortality salience would increase belief in a true self. This hypothesis was based on existing evidence that the idea of a true self helps people organize the world as well as evidence suggesting that people are particularly likely to rely on such organizing structures when death is salient. We further hypothesized that this effect would be pronounced for individuals high in personal need for structure (PNS). However, our results revealed a pattern in the opposite direction as predicted. While PNS did moderate the effect of mortality salience on belief in a true self, high PNS individuals were actually less likely to derogate the author of an essay suggesting the true self is an illusion (Study 1) and less likely to endorse items assessing explicit belief in the true self (Study 2) following MS. These findings contradict existing theory and evidence and suggest an interesting potential avenue for future research.

Keywords:

• Terror management theory
• existential psychology
• motivation
• coherence
• personal need for structure
• true self

Notes

1. Consistent with other TMT research, there were no main effects of MS on general PA or general NA in either study. Controlling for PA and NA also did not alter any of the results reported below. We therefore do not discuss affect further.

2. Although explicit SE moderates certain TMT effects (Burke et al., 2010; Routledge et al., 2010), we found no evidence that SE moderated the predicted MS × PNS effects in Studies 1 or 2 (ps > .636). Self-esteem was also not affected by the MS manipulation or the MS × PNS interaction (ps > .249). Finally, and consistent with our view that true-self beliefs and self-esteem are distinct, these constructs were empirically independent of one another (rs < .110, ps < .057). We therefore do not discuss SE further.

3. Belief in the true self was our primary interest in this study. However, after the true-self belief measure, participants also completed three items focused on the idea that the true self is discovered (e.g. “The true self is innate, waiting to be discovered”) and three items focused on the idea that the true self is created (e.g. “The true self is something people create for themselves”). These separate scales were included to explore the possibility that MS might affect people’s beliefs about where “true selves” come from (see Schlegel et al., 2012). We also included an additional exploratory item taken from previous work on the moral nature of the true self (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014). This question asked participants to indicate whether an individual was still “who he is” after losing his moral conscience. We do not report results focused on these items because they were secondary aims of the project and the same interaction was not observed with these measures. Critically, all of these exploratory measures came AFTER our primary dependent variable (true-self beliefs).

4. We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.