Fear of self-annihilation and existential uncertainty as predictors of worldview defense: Comparing terror management and uncertainty theories

ABSTRACT

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that thoughts of death trigger a concern about self-annihilation that motivates the defense of cultural worldviews. In contrast, uncertainty theorists propose that thoughts of death trigger feelings of uncertainty that motivate worldview defense. University students (N = 414) completed measures of the chronic fear of self-annihilation and existential uncertainty as well as the need for closure. They then evaluated either a meaning threat stimulus or a control stimulus. Consistent with TMT, participants with a high fear of self-annihilation and a high need for closure showed the greatest dislike of the meaning threat stimulus, even after controlling for their existential uncertainty. Contrary to the uncertainty perspective, fear of existential uncertainty showed no significant effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Meaning threat
• need for closure
• terror management theory
• uncertainty

View correction statement:

Correction

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/qn6hr/

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/qn6hr/

Notes

1. The survey also included self-report measures of creativity, self-esteem, sensation-seeking, the need for cognition, processing fluency, meaning compensation strategies, and ability to understand multiple meanings. These measures did not yield any results that related to current research questions, and so they are not discussed further. A copy of the research survey and data is available at https://osf.io/qn6hr/.

2. The FDR is the maximum proportion of Type I errors (“false discoveries”) that can be expected for a particular data set. The FDR adjustment is more powerful than the Bonferroni adjustment because it limits the proportion of false positive (Type I) results to a certain percentage (e.g., 5%) rather than reduces the chances of making a single false positive error. To illustrate, imagine that a researcher conducts 100 independent tests with an alpha level of .05. In this case, the researcher will have a 99.41% probability of obtaining at least one Type I error (Glickman, Rao, & Schultz, 2014). However, with an FDR of .05, the proportion of Type I errors can be controlled to a maximum of 5% of the significant results without sacrificing sufficient power to detect genuine effects (Glickman et al., 2014). The FDR adjustment is based on the frequency of true null hypotheses in a specified data as indicated by the distribution of p values in that data set (Glickman et al., 2014). Hence, data sets that contain a higher frequency of true null hypotheses (as indicated by a less skewed distribution of p values) need to have a lower alpha level in order to achieve a 5% FDR.

3. Continuous variables were checked for outliers using a ±3 SDs criterion (Osborne & Overbay, 2004). There was one outlier on the need for closure variable. The pattern of significant and nonsignificant results that are reported remained the same when this outlier was excluded from the analyses. The analyses were also repeated including (a) trait anxiety and perceived awareness of the research hypothesis as covariates and (b) state anxiety and perceived awareness of the research hypothesis as covariates. Again, the pattern of significant and nonsignificant results remained the same with these covariates included in the analyses. Hence, the effects reported above do not appear to be related to either general trait anxiety, general state anxiety, or demand characteristics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Rubin

Mark Rubin is an Associate Professor in social psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is best known for his work on social identity and intergroup relations, including research on prejudice and stereotyping. For more information about his work, please visit: http://bit.ly/1aMjqO9