Mortality Salience in the News of Immigrant Perpetrators: Effects on Viewers’ Emotion, Story Evaluation, and Perceived Crime Susceptibility

Abstract

This study approaches the interplay between terror management and social identity theories to examine the individual and joint effects of mortality salience (MS) and social group difference (SGD). A 2 (MS: present/absent) × 2 (SGD: immigrant/nonimmigrant perpetrator) within-subjects repeated measures experiment was designed to study news viewers’ negative emotion, story evaluation, and crime susceptibility. Results revealed that MS promoted higher negative emotion and better story evaluation but decreased crime susceptibility. TV news of immigrant perpetrators activated higher negative emotion and higher crime susceptibility, but not story evaluation. In addition, the joint effects of MS and SGD were significantly found on viewers’ emotion, story evaluation, and crime susceptibility.

Keywords:

• crime susceptibility
• emotion
• mortality salience
• terror management theory
• story evaluation

Notes

1 There were four types of experimental stimuli used for this within-subjects experiment. The first type (immigrant perpetrators with MS) featured the investigation into the death of XXX, who disappeared last year and details about a potential link to the case of assaults by an immigrant XXX. The second type (immigrant perpetrators without MS) included the arrest of Mexican drug lord XXX and details about the criminal activities of his family members in the US. The third type (American perpetrators with MS) reported the shooting death of XXX by her ex-boyfriend XXX, whose criminal past was unknown to her family and details about the sign of domestic violence. The fourth type (American perpetrators without MS) featured the question of why XXX, who kidnapped XXX and XXX, was free despite his long history of sexual molestation and details about his record of sex crimes.