Loss Anxiety: An Alternative Explanation for the Fundamental Fears in Human Beings

Abstract

In this article, fear of loss as well as fear of death are introduced to explain cultural worldview defence reactions of individuals. Participants were subjected to mortality salience, disability salience and control conditions. Mortality salience and paralysis salience were found to lead to a change in conservatism scores. In a qualitative follow-up study, when reminded about mortality, the participants reported less individual sadness than expected; whereas when the participants were reminded about paralysis, greater individual sadness was reported. Any kind of loss manipulation that is moderately fearful, highly imaginable, and highly self-relevant is suggested to affect cultural worldview defence reactions.

Acknowledgments

This study is based on Müjde Koca-Atabey's PhD dissertation submitted to Middle East Technical University.

Notes

Note: The mean scores on the same row or on the same column that do not share the same subscript are significantly different from each other.