Leung, Hoi-Ting, Chew, Peter K.H., and Caltabiano, Nerina Jane (2024) Do Pandemics Trigger Death Thoughts? Journal of Humanistic Psychology. (In Press)

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Abstract

The current article aims to investigate the effects of pandemics of varying severity on death-thought accessibility in two studies while controlling for health anxiety. Study 1 (n = 203) examined the effect of standard mortality salience (MS), severe pandemic, mild pandemic, and dental conditions on death-thought accessibility as assessed by the death word fragment task (DWFT). Study 1 did not find significant effects of MS and delay on deaththought accessibility, which could be attributable to the less-sensitive nature of the DWFT. Thus, Study 2 (n = 163) was conducted with more sensitive death-thought accessibility measures. Results from Study 2 found that response time toward death and positive words on the lexical-decision task was significantly faster than in standard MS and dental conditions. Both studies recruited predominantly Americans (Study 1) and Europeans (Study 2), which limits the generalizability of the results to other populations. Future studies can consider replicating the studies in other populations.

Item ID:	83717
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1552-650X
Keywords:	terror management theory, pandemics, death anxiety, death-thought accessibility
Copyright Information:	Open Access. CC BY-NC.
Date Deposited:	24 Sep 2024 00:30
FoR Codes:	52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5205 Social and personality psychology > 520599 Social and personality psychology not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280121 Expanding knowledge in psychology @ 100%
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