Growing research suggests that death anxiety may be transdiagnostic, playing a key role in the development and symptomology of psychopathology. This meta-analysis examined the relationship between death anxiety and mental illness symptoms. In total, 104 papers were included, representing cross-sectional data from 99 studies (ntotal = 24,434), and experimental data from 11 studies (ntotal = 1372). Meta-analyses of cross-sectional studies indicated a moderate correlation (r = 0.397) between death anxiety and overall mental illness symptoms. The clinical nature of the group emerged as a significant moderator of this effect. In addition, the relationship between death anxiety and mental illness symptoms was larger for clinical samples (r = 0.580), and for anxiety-related symptoms (r = 0.506) than for depression. Additional meta-analyses of 11 mortality salience studies revealed that death reminders had an overall moderate impact on clinical symptoms (Hedge\'s g = 0.481). The relevance of the sample to the symptom being measured significantly predicted this relationship; that is, the effect was moderate-to-large (Hedge\'s g = 0.671) when excluding comparison subgroups for which the effect was not predicted by the authors. The clinical nature of the sample did not significantly moderate the effect. The experimental studies were generally of higher quality and lower risk of publication bias compared to cross-sectional studies. These findings support the strong transdiagnostic role of death anxiety across numerous disorders. Clinical implications include the potential need to treat death anxiety directly, to maximise long-term therapy benefits.

This research tested the assumptions of Terror Management Theory (Pyszczynski et al., 2015) and conservatism as motivated social cognition (Jost et al., 2003) regarding how belief systems relate to existential anxiety. Conservatism as motivated social cognition posits that politically conservative ideologies are uniquely capable of minimizing fears about death. In contrast, TMT asserts that ideological rigidity is associated with less fear of death but it also promotes aggression and intolerance against those with different beliefs. The relation of ideological rigidity and political conservatism to death anxiety and intolerance of those who have differing worldviews was explored in a sample of American university students (n = 134) and of American respondents from the Prolific crowdsourcing platform (n = 199). The results from both samples supported the hypothesis that ideological rigidity was associated with more negative reactions to people with different beliefs. The results regarding death anxiety were more complicated. In the student sample, personal need for structure was the best predictor of death anxiety, with higher scores on personal need for structure being associated with more death anxiety. In the crowdsourcing sample, social conservatism was the best predictor of death anxiety, with more conservatism being associated with less death anxiety.

Individuals employ various coping mechanisms to deal with the fear of death. While materialism and status consumption are commonly recognized in the literature as such strategies, no study has yet empirically tested this premise. Accordingly, this study examined the mediating role of death avoidance in the link between the fear of death and death-related status consumption (DRSC). Data obtained from 346 participants were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that fear of death significantly and positively influences DRSC and that death avoidance partially and positively mediates this relationship. Results also revealed that materialism strengthens the relationship between fear of death and DRSC, while it does not significantly moderate the relationship between death avoidance and DRSC. These results support the conclusion that death-related status consumption may play a critical role as an avoidance mechanism in coping with the fear of death. This study, being among the few that investigate death-related consumer behaviors, enriches both terror management theory and the literature on consumer behavior in crises.

Terror Management Theory (Tmt, solomon et al., 1991) claims that individuals use three anxiety buffer mechanisms to regulate their death awareness - cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and proximity seeking. In this article, we use these three TMT anxiety buffers to explain the phenomenon of posthumous sperm retrieval, requested by spouses or parents, usually of young soldiers who died during their military service. Whereas this phenomenon has been known for some time, it increased dramatically in the initial days following the massacre conducted by the Hamas terrorist organization in Israel on October 7, 2023. We claim that this was an immediate reaction to this terror event, which posed a direct, existential threat to those who were exposed to the massacre and the soldiers who defended the country, but also to the entire Israeli society, as well as for Jews around the globe. We use interpretive phenomenology to qualitatively examine the phenomenon of retrieving sperm from dead young men, analyzing the requests to retrieve sperm posthumously as a sign of the need to provide these young men with symbolic immortality, on both personal and national levels. We integrate this explanation with the military ethos and the tendency of Israeli society to endorse familyist and pronatalist values to expand our understanding of this contemporary phenomenon in Israel.

Terror management theory is focused on the role that awareness of death plays in diverse aspects of life. Here, we discuss the theory\'s implications for understanding the widely varying ways in which people have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that regardless of whether one consciously believes that the virus is a major threat to life or only a minor inconvenience, fear of death plays an important role in driving one\'s attitudes and behavior related to the virus. We focus on the terror management theory distinction between proximal defenses, which are activated when thoughts of death are in current focal attention and are logically related to the threat at hand, and distal defenses, which are activated when thoughts of death are on the fringes of one\'s consciousness and entail the pursuit of meaning, personal value, and close relationships. We use this framework to discuss the many ways in which COVID-19 undermines psychological equanimity, the diverse ways people have responded to this threat, and the role of ineffective terror management in psychological distress and disorder that may emerge in response to the virus.

UNASSIGNED: Using the morality salience paradigm, this research tested whether subliminal death stimuli lead to increased physical strength. Moreover, it was investigated if mindfulness and self-esteem instability influence terror management.
UNASSIGNED: In total, data from 160 undergraduate sports students were analyzed. Participants completed a word decision task in which they were presented with either the word death or pain for 28.5 ms. Before and after the task, their grip strength was measured using a hand dynamometer.
UNASSIGNED: Linear mixed models could neither confirm the effect of the mortality salience hypothesis on strength nor an influence of mindfulness and self-esteem.
UNASSIGNED: The results raise the question of a potential influence of subliminal mortality salience on athletic performance and how mindfulness and self-esteem instability affect terror management.

OBJECTIVE: The prominence of death during the COVID-19 pandemic was heightened by the potential of personally knowing someone who lost their life to the virus. The terror management theory (TMT) suggests that the salient presence of death has a pronounced effect on behavior and may result in the ossification of beliefs and actions aligned with one\'s worldview (i.e., the mortality salience hypothesis). In this study, we evaluated how death exposure early in the COVID-19 pandemic could enact the process of firming up held beliefs and attitudes related to health and safety. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that exposure to a personal loss during the pandemic would strengthen participants\' baseline attitudes and behaviors regarding COVID-19 safety guidelines.
METHODS: Data were analyzed from a prospective, regional survey administered at two time points during the pandemic, June-July 2020 and May 2021, in five United States northeastern states. Baseline and follow-up surveys were administered approximately 12 months apart, with adherence to public guidance and death exposure measured at both timepoints and other safety measures at follow-up only.
RESULTS: Our results indicated that there were significant main effects of death exposure on guideline adherence and support for COVID-related public policy. Contrary to the mortality salience hypothesis, death exposures after baseline were related to higher medical mistrust at follow-up for those high in adherence at baseline, rather than those with low adherence.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results offer some conflicting evidence to the mortality salience hypothesis. Rather than entrench people in their worldviews, death in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to sway people away from their initial stances. This finding has important implications for TMT literature and for the COVID-19 pandemic response.

OBJECTIVE: To identify whether hospice workers hold unique and theoretically-informative perspectives about death, especially as they relate to terror management processes.
METHODS: Twelve hospice workers from two hospices in Tucson, Arizona, United States, participated in semi-structured interviews. Interview and analytic practices were guided by Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
RESULTS: Three categories were identified in relation to death attitudes: effects of chronic confrontation with death; reasons for working in hospice; and perceptions of death in others.
CONCLUSIONS: Two theoretically informative trends appeared. First, hospice workers largely manage death anxiety as identified by existing literature with the notable exception that hospice workers overall seem to integrate death and dying into their worldviews as a meaningful category, as opposed to avoiding thinking about death. Second, even among those regularly exposed to death, there seems to be a range across participants on a continuum from avoiding to confronting the topic of death.

UNASSIGNED: Grounded in Terror Management Theory (TMT), this research explored the influence of mortality salience on preferences for afterlife beliefs (reincarnation vs. resignation to fate) within a Chinese context. We also examined the mediating role of death anxiety and the moderating effects of connection thinking across different age groups.
UNASSIGNED: Across three experimental studies involving a cumulative sample of 485 Chinese participants, we primed individuals with thoughts of their own mortality and then assessed their death anxiety and proclivity toward reincarnation beliefs or resignation to fate. Connection thinking-a cognitive construct emphasizing relational interconnectedness-was also evaluated to ascertain its moderating impact.
UNASSIGNED: The data revealed a pronounced preference for reincarnation beliefs as a distal defense mechanism following mortality salience, significantly mediated by death anxiety. The moderating role of connection thinking was also verified, but with age-related differences: among younger Chinese participants (age < 35), heightened connection thinking buffered against increased death anxiety triggered by mortality salience and thus mitigated its mediating role. Conversely, for older participants (age ≥ 35), amplified connection thinking exacerbated both the increased death anxiety and its mediating effect.
UNASSIGNED: These findings contribute to TMT by elucidating the influence of death anxiety on the relationship between mortality salience and afterlife beliefs in the Chinese cultural context. They also enrich the literature on connection thinking by uncovering its moderating role. Moreover, our research yields practical implications for coping with mortality salience and alleviating existential anxiety, enhancing the understanding of these phenomena across different cultural and age groups.

UNASSIGNED: This study sought to evaluate Terror Management Theory (TMT) assumptions about death awareness and its psychological impact in the context of a real-world war situation with high external validity. We examined if factors such as habituation to war circumstances and psychological resilience could buffer the effects on civilians\' anxiety, physical and mental health, and affect.
UNASSIGNED: We implemented a pre-registered smartphone-based experience sampling method study over four weeks, with 307 participants (k = 7,824) living in war-affected areas in Ukraine whereby participants were regularly exposed to war situations, including air-raid alarms, explosions, and infrastructural problems.
UNASSIGNED: The data indicated that war situations significantly increased anxiety, negatively impacting mental health, and raising somatic symptom severity. While habituation showed a mild buffering effect on these impacts, resilience did not.
UNASSIGNED: This real-world investigation supports TMT\'s fundamental assumptions about death awareness and its psychological implications. However, even amidst the presence of real, life-threatening situations, the buffering effects of habituation were surprisingly minimal. This suggests that further exploration of TMT\'s buffering factors in real-world scenarios is warranted.