‘Heroes aren’t always so great!’ – Heroic perceptions under mortality salience

ABSTRACT

According to terror management theory, in a first study (N = 80), we tested the hypothesis that heroic perceptions of historic heroes would become more positive under mortality salience. Results, however, showed the opposite effect – heroic perceptions were less positive. To explain this unexpected finding, we referred to a social comparison perspective, assuming comparisons with a hero are likely to be unfavorable for one’s self-esteem. Two further (pre-registered) studies were conducted to test this idea. Mortality salience effects in Study 2 (N = 615) were not significant. However, using an improved experimental procedure in Study 3 (N = 600), heroic perceptions were indeed significantly less positive under MS, especially for participants with low trait self-esteem and low social comparison orientation.

KEYWORDS:

• Heroic perceptions
• mortality salience
• terror management theory
• social comparison
• self-esteem

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All Data and material of the presented studies are available on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/83fu4)

Supplementary materials

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Notably, in these studies, heroic perceptions had not been explicitly measured. Only McCabe et al. (2016, Study 2) measured heroic perceptions after participants wrote about what a hero looks like and used this measure as a manipulation check.

2. Results regarding the PANAS items for all three studies are in the Supplemental Material.

3. Eleven participants did not respond to the items of at least one person.

4. Analyses regarding differences between the targets for all three studies are in the Supplemental Material.

5. Details on the exclusion rules can be found in the Supplemental Material.

6. There were no significant two-way interaction effects between a) MS and sex, b) MS and political orientation, and c) MS and patriotism, on heroic perceptions, all ps > .117 (see Supplemental Material).

7. There were no significant two-way interaction effects between a) MS and sex, b) MS and political orientation, and c) MS and patriotism, on heroic perceptions, all ps > .436 (see Supplemental Material).