Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Weesperplein 4, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2013 Sep;39(9):1152-63. doi: 10.1177/0146167213490804. Epub 2013 Jul 16.
Mortality salience (MS) can lead to a paralyzing terror, and to cope with this, people strive for literal or symbolic immortality. As MS leads to conformity and narrow-mindedness, we predicted that MS would lead to lower creativity, unless creativity itself could lead to leaving a legacy and thus symbolic immortality. We show that this pattern holds (Experiment 1), but only when creativity is socially valued (Experiment 2). Finally, especially individualistic people are more creative under MS when they can leave a legacy than when they cannot, and high originality predicts subsequent accessibility of death thoughts (Experiment 3). Implications are discussed.
死亡凸显(MS)会导致瘫痪性恐惧,为了应对这种恐惧,人们努力追求字面意义上或象征性的不朽。由于 MS 会导致从众和狭隘,我们预测 MS 会导致创造力降低,除非创造力本身可以带来遗产,从而实现象征性的不朽。我们的研究表明,这种模式是成立的(实验 1),但只有当创造力受到社会重视时(实验 2)才成立。最后,特别是当个人主义者能够留下遗产时,他们在 MS 下的创造力会更高,而当他们不能留下遗产时,创造力会更低,高原创性预测随后会更容易想到死亡(实验 3)。讨论了其含义。