Does the mortality salience effect on worldview defence depend on the cultural orientation of Chinese people?

Influence of subjective social class and social mobility beliefs on self-focused attention: the mediating role of sense of control

We verified whether social class shapes different models of the self in China, by integrating individuals' social mobility beliefs and exploring the mediating effect of sense of control. Participants were randomly assigned to one of 2 (subjective social class: upper vs. low class) × 2 (social mobility beliefs: high vs. low mobility) manipulation conditions. They then completed the sense of control questionnaire and self-focused attention task. High mobility belief could alleviate the difference in perception among different subjective social classes and improve lower classes' control perception. Sense of control mediates subjective social class effects and social mobility beliefs on self-focused attention.

No significant effect of mortality salience on unconscious ethnic bias among the Japanese

OBJECTIVE

Terror management theory posits that when mortality is salient, individuals attempt to defend their cultural worldviews. Although numerous studies have confirmed this hypothesis, some recent studies have suggested that East Asians do not engage in worldview defense. We conducted a pre-registered experiment with 895 Japanese adults to investigate whether they exhibited worldview defense at an unconscious level. Participants performed the Implicit Association Test using Japanese and Korean surnames as stimuli after being primed with thoughts about mortality.

RESULTS

The results revealed that mortality salience had no influence on implicit ethnic bias. These findings support the notion that East Asians do not engage in worldview defense, in accord with recent criticism of the validity of terror management theory. We discuss the limitations and implications of our findings.

Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of Terror Management Theory

Terror Management Theory (TMT) postulates that humans, in response to awareness of their death, developed complex defenses to remove the salience and discomfort stemming from those thoughts. In a standard paradigm to test this theory, an individual is presented with a death-related prime (Mortality Salience; MS), such as writing the details of their own death, or something neutral, such as watching television. After a distractor task (for delay), participants complete the dependent variable, such as rating how much they like or agree with a pro- or anti-national essay and its author. Individuals in the MS condition typically exhibit greater worldview defense than control conditions by rating the pro-national essay more positively and the anti-national essay more negatively. We completed five separate studies across five unique samples with the goal of replicating and extending this well-established pattern to provide further understanding of the phenomena that underlie the effects of MS. However, despite using standard procedures, we were unable to replicate basic patterns of the dependent variable in the MS conditions. We also pooled all responses into two meta-analyses, one examining all dependent variables and one focusing on the anti-national essay; yet the effect sizes in these analyses did not significantly differ from zero. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of these (unintended) failures to replicate. It is not clear if these null findings were due to methodological limitations, restraints of online/crowd-sourced recruitment, or ever-evolving sociocultural factors.

Using a mediating model of death attitude and meaning in life to understand nursing students attitude about hospice care

BACKGROUND

Nurse-led hospice teams are an emerging trend in contemporary health care practice in China. However, Chinese nursing students are often ill-prepared to work in hospice care. Study findings on the attitude of nursing students toward the care of people who are dying and death varied among different countries and regions.

OBJECTIVES

To propose and empirically test a mediating model that examines how death attitude and meaning in life interact to affect Chinese undergraduate nursing students and their attitude toward the care of people who are dying.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional study.

PARTICIPANTS

A convenience sample of 1410 Chinese undergraduate nursing students.

METHODS

Data were collected from July to December 2020 using Chinese versions of the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale, Form B (FATCOD-B-C), Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R-C), and Purpose in Life Test (CPLT-C). SPSS version 22.0 and AMOS version 24.0 were used for statistical analysis.

RESULTS

The average FATCOD-B-C score was 98.28 ± 8.02. Death attitude and meaning in life were positively correlated with attitude toward care of the dying (p < 0.001), but death attitude was negatively correlated with meaning in life (p < 0.001). Pathway analysis showed that fear of death was significantly and positively correlated with attitude toward care of people who are dying. A mediating role was found among neutral acceptance, escape acceptance, and meaning in life to some extent. Meaning in life suppressed effects among the model.

CONCLUSION

This study revealed that Chinese undergraduate nursing students' attitude toward care of the dying was a positive nurturing process. Future nurse education should first identity the fear of death, neutral acceptance, or escape acceptance of nursing students' death attitude, and then develop a hospice curriculum based on fear management.

The Impact of Mortality Salience, Negative Emotions and Cultural Values on Suicidal Ideation in COVID-19: A Conditional Process Model

As suicides incurred by the COVID-19 outbreak keep happening in many countries, researchers have raised concerns that the ongoing pandemic may lead to "a wave of suicides" in society. Suicidal ideation (SI) is a critical factor in conducting suicide intervention and also an important indicator for measuring people's mental health. Therefore, it is vital to identify the influencing factors of suicidal ideation and its psychological mechanism during the outbreak. Based on the terror management theory, in the present study we conducted a social media big data analysis to explore the joint effects of mortality salience (MS), negative emotions (NE), and cultural values on suicidal ideation in 337 regions on the Chinese mainland. The findings showed that (1) mortality salience was a positive predictor of suicidal ideation, with negative emotions acting as a mediator; (2) individualism was a positive moderator in the first half-path of the mediation model; (3) collectivism was a negative moderator in the first half-path of the mediation model. Our findings not only expand the application of the terror management theory in suicide intervention but provide some insights into post-pandemic mental healthcare. Timely efforts are needed to provide psychological interventions and counseling on outbreak-caused negative emotions in society. Compared with people living in collectivism-prevailing regions, those living in individualism-prevailing regions may be more vulnerable to mortality salience and negative emotions and need more social attention.