Testing the Death Thought Suppression and Rebound Hypothesis: Death Thought Accessibility Following Mortality Salience Decreases During a Delay

Department

Psychological Sciences

Document Type

Article

Publication Source

Social Psychological and Personality Science

Publication Date

2012-08-01

Volume

3

Issue

5

First Page

622

Last Page

629

Abstract

It is an important hypothesis of terror management theory that death thoughts are suppressed immediately following a mortality salience treatment but that, after a short delay during which suppression ceases, death thoughts become more accessible. Although there is much indirect empirical support for this idea, there are few direct tests. Our goal was to test this hypothesis with simple experiments. Thus, after mortality was made salient, death thought accessibility was measured immediately or after a delay. The results contradicted the prediction that death thought accessibility should be higher in the delay condition than in the no delay condition. © The Author(s) 2012.

Keywords

concept accessibility, rebound, suppression, terror management theory

DOI

10.1177/1948550611432938

https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611432938

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS