Scared to death: an examination of underlying terror following death awareness

According to Terror Management Theory, when mortality is made salient the potential to experience terror causes powerful worldview defenses to manifest to suppress this potential. Recently, however, the theory has been criticized because no actual evidence has been found to show this potential to experience terror. The current research used Galvanic Skin Response and a battery of self-report measures (e.g. negative affect, stress, fear, distress, etc.) to attempt to provide evidence of potential terror. The results were partially confirmatory suggesting that although mortality salience failed to evoke arousal, negative affect, and stress, it did evoke sadness and distress and suggests that terror is a highly complex combination of multiple negative components as well as physiological arousal. Interpretations and explanations of these results are discussed in accordance with previous Terror Management research.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Arrowood, Robert B.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Hood, Ralph W., Jr., 1942-
• Chesser, Svetlana; Ross, David F.
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Fear of death -- Psychological aspects

Licence

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/455

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1601