The Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem: An Experimental Study

the Terror Management (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) and Emotional-Processing Mind (Longs, 2004) theo- ories suggest that the threat of death is the most fundamental and important source of adaptive and maladaptive psychological structures like high and low self-esteem. The present research examined the effect of Mortality Salience (MS; Rosenblatt et al., 1989) on self-esteem. A sample of 91 female and 128 male students of TehranUniversity were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. The experimental group answered the two questions about MS topic and the control group answered the two questions about Non Mortality Salience topic (Pyszczynski et al., 1999). Then both groups filled out Rosenberg's Self-Esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965). Findings revealed that the self-esteem of experimental group was significantly higher than control group (P=0.03). Results are discussed based on the role of death in the psychological structure of the individual.