Mortality salience and religion: Divergent effects on the defense of cultural worldviews for the religious and the non-religious

摘要

Religious and non-religious individuals differ in their core beliefs. The religious endorse a supernatural, divinely inspired view of the world, while the non-religious hold largely secular worldviews. As a result they may respond differently to existential threats. Three studies confirmed this prediction. After a mortality salience (MS) or control prime, Canadian participants read, and responded to, an essay hostile to Western civilization, allegedly written by a radical Muslim student. Results indicated that the non-religious reliably showed the conventional cultural worldview defense by devaluating the content of the message and decreasing support for the civil rights of anti-Western individuals when death was salient. No such effect was found for the religious. Religious and non-religious participants did not differ in self-esteem levels or in death-thought accessibility. These results suggest that a religious stance among believers plays a defensive role against the awareness of death.