A Function of Form: Terror Management and Structuring the Social World
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2004
Keywords
terror management; social information structuring; death-related anxiety management; mortality salience; representative information; inconsistent behavior; personal need for structure; causal order
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.190
Abstract
Drawing on lay epistemology theory (A. W. Kruglanski, 1980, 1989), the authors assessed a terror management analysis (J. Greenberg, S. Solomon, & T. Pyszczynski, 1997) of the psychological function of structuring social information. Seven studies tested variations of the hypothesis that simple, benign interpretations of social information function, in part, to manage death-related anxiety. In Studies 1-4, mortality salience (MS) exaggerated primacy effects and reliance on representative information, decreased preference for a behaviorally inconsistent target among those high in personal need for structure (PNS), and increased high-PNS participants' preference for interpersonal balance. In Studies 5-7, MS increased high-PNS participants' preference for interpretations that suggest a just world and a benevolent causal order of events in the social world.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
No
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, v. 87, issue 2, p. 190-210
Scholar Commons Citation
Landau, Mark J.; Johns, Michael; Greenberg, Jeff; Pyszczynski, Tom; Martens, Andy; Goldenberg, Jamie L.; and Solomon, Sheldon, "A Function of Form: Terror Management and Structuring the Social World" (2004). Psychology Faculty Publications. 1515.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/psy_facpub/1515
