Arndt J, Greenberg J, Solomon S, Pyszczynski T, Simon L
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721, USA.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 1997 Jul;73(1):5-18. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.73.1.5.
Previous research has shown that after a mortality-salience (MS) treatment, death thought accessibility and worldview defense are initially low and then increase after a delay, suggesting that a person's initial response to conscious thoughts of mortality is to actively suppress death thoughts. If so, then high cognitive load, by disrupting suppression efforts, should lead to immediate increases in death thought accessibility and cultural worldview defense. Studies 1 and 2 supported this reasoning. Specifically, Study 1 replicated the delayed increase in death accessibility after MS among low cognitive load participants but showed a reversed pattern among participants under high cognitive load. Study 2 showed that, unlike low cognitive load participants, high cognitive load participants exhibited immediate increase in pro-American bias after MS. Study 3 demonstrated that worldview defense in response to MS reduces the delayed increase in death accessibility. Implications of these findings for understanding both terror management processes and psychological defense in general are discussed.
先前的研究表明，在进行死亡凸显（MS）处理后，死亡念头的可及性和世界观防御最初较低，之后经过一段时间会增加，这表明一个人对有意识的死亡念头的初始反应是积极抑制死亡念头。如果是这样，那么高认知负荷通过干扰抑制努力，应该会导致死亡念头可及性和文化世界观防御立即增加。研究1和研究2支持了这一推理。具体而言，研究1在低认知负荷参与者中复制了MS后死亡可及性的延迟增加，但在高认知负荷参与者中显示出相反的模式。研究2表明，与低认知负荷参与者不同，高认知负荷参与者在MS后表现出亲美偏见的立即增加。研究3证明，对MS的世界观防御减少了死亡可及性的延迟增加。本文讨论了这些发现对于理解恐怖管理过程和一般心理防御的意义。
