Mortality Salience and Self-Stereotyping
Abstract
Terror management theory (TMT) states that mortality salience can threaten an
individual's identity and cultural worldviews. Cultural worldviews help minimize
uncertainty and create a sense of social identity in the world. Social categorization can
be defined as an individual's identification with a group or it can be referred to as
"stereotyping." In general, stereotyping is viewed as something negative, but in
situations with mortality salience, individuals will self-verify themselves into a specific
social group. In the past, studies have shown that mortality salience leads to favoring
characteristics and the people in one's own social group. In the present study, it was
hypothesized that individuals will self-stereotype themselves into social groups when
threatened by the thought of death. 54 undergraduate females from University of
Michigan participated in the experiment in exchange for credit. The surveys included
either a mortality salient condition or a control condition. The results were not
significant in which individuals in a mortality salient condition will self-stereotype
themselves into a social group in order to find comfort.