Northern Trust Corporation, Chicago, IL United States of America.
Department of Psychology, SUNY Old Westbury, Old Westbury, NY, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 May 9;18(5):e0285267. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285267. eCollection 2023.
Terror Management Theory (TMT) postulates that humans, in response to awareness of their death, developed complex defenses to remove the salience and discomfort stemming from those thoughts. In a standard paradigm to test this theory, an individual is presented with a death-related prime (Mortality Salience; MS), such as writing the details of their own death, or something neutral, such as watching television. After a distractor task (for delay), participants complete the dependent variable, such as rating how much they like or agree with a pro- or anti-national essay and its author. Individuals in the MS condition typically exhibit greater worldview defense than control conditions by rating the pro-national essay more positively and the anti-national essay more negatively. We completed five separate studies across five unique samples with the goal of replicating and extending this well-established pattern to provide further understanding of the phenomena that underlie the effects of MS. However, despite using standard procedures, we were unable to replicate basic patterns of the dependent variable in the MS conditions. We also pooled all responses into two meta-analyses, one examining all dependent variables and one focusing on the anti-national essay; yet the effect sizes in these analyses did not significantly differ from zero. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of these (unintended) failures to replicate. It is not clear if these null findings were due to methodological limitations, restraints of online/crowd-sourced recruitment, or ever-evolving sociocultural factors.
死亡恐惧管理理论（TMT）假设，人类为了应对对死亡的意识，发展出了复杂的防御机制，以消除这些想法所带来的显著影响和不适。在测试该理论的一个标准范式中，个体被呈现与死亡相关的启动（死亡凸显；MS），例如写下自己死亡的细节，或一些中性的事物，例如看电视。在分心任务（延迟）之后，参与者完成因变量，例如对赞成或反对民族的文章及其作者的喜欢或同意程度进行评分。在 MS 条件下的个体通常比控制条件下的个体表现出更强的世界观防御，他们会对赞成民族的文章给予更高的评价，对反对民族的文章给予更低的评价。我们在五个独特的样本中完成了五项独立的研究，旨在复制和扩展这一既定模式，以进一步了解 MS 效应背后的现象。然而，尽管我们使用了标准程序，但我们无法在 MS 条件下复制因变量的基本模式。我们还将所有的反应都汇总到两个元分析中，一个分析所有的因变量，一个分析反民族的文章；然而，这些分析中的效应大小与零没有显著差异。我们讨论了这些（非预期）未能复制的方法和理论意义。目前尚不清楚这些零结果是由于方法学限制、在线/众包招募的限制，还是不断变化的社会文化因素所致。
