Schindler Simon, Reinhard Marc-André, Stahlberg Dagmar
Department of Social Science, University of Mannheim, A5, 68131 Mannheim, Germany.
Psychol Rep. 2012 Oct;111(2):565-74. doi: 10.2466/20.02.21.PR0.111.5.565-574.
Research on terror management theory found evidence that people under mortality salience strive to live up to salient cultural norms and values, like egalitarianism, pacifism, or helpfulness. A basic, strongly internalized norm in most human societies is the norm of reciprocity: people should support those who supported them (i.e., positive reciprocity), and people should injure those who injured them (i.e., negative reciprocity), respectively. In an experiment (N = 98; 47 women, 51 men), mortality salience overall significantly increased personal relevance of the norm of reciprocity (M = 4.45, SD = 0.65) compared to a control condition (M = 4.19, SD = 0.59). Specifically, under mortality salience there was higher motivation to punish those who treated them unfavourably (negative norm of reciprocity). Unexpectedly, relevance of the norm of positive reciprocity remained unaffected by mortality salience. Implications and limitations are discussed.
对恐怖管理理论的研究发现，有证据表明，处于死亡凸显情境下的人们会努力践行凸显的文化规范和价值观，如平等主义、和平主义或乐于助人。在大多数人类社会中，互惠规范是一种基本的、内化程度很高的规范：人们应该支持那些支持过他们的人（即正向互惠），并且应该伤害那些伤害过他们的人（即负向互惠）。在一项实验中（N = 98；47名女性，51名男性），与对照条件（M = 4.19，SD = 0.59）相比，死亡凸显总体上显著提高了互惠规范的个人相关性（M = 4.45，SD = 0.65）。具体而言，在死亡凸显情境下，惩罚那些对自己不利的人的动机更强（负向互惠规范）。出乎意料的是，正向互惠规范的相关性并未受到死亡凸显的影响。本文讨论了研究的意义和局限性。
