Effect of Combinational Mortality Salience Interventions on Self-esteem regarding to Time Interval Considerations

Terror management theory attempts to answer two fundamental questions: Why do people have a strong tendency to love themselves and why do they avoid whom are not similar to them? According to this theory the man’s survival tendency is the answer of these two questions. This theory claims that people reduce terror of death by gaining sense of valuableness and also by being attracted to their cultural worldview. One of the hypotheses of this approach, named mortality salience, claims that a reminder of mortality and consequent 3-5 minute interval for making death thoughts accessible will produce an anxiety which people will attempts to manage by boosting their self-esteem. This hypothesis has been examined in this study. A sample of 45 female students of University of Tehran has been placed randomly in 3 groups (two experimental groups and one control group). Two experimental groups received mortality salience intervention (showing films of burial ceremony and two questions about their own death) and control group received an intervention irrelevant to death. After intervention, all three groups filled out Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale (RSES). First experimental group filled out the scale immediately after the intervention, while the second experimental group answered to the scale after an interval, because we wanted to examine the effect of this interval after the mortality salience intervention. Obtained results indicated that there is no significant difference between control group and experimental group without time interval (p = 0.001, H(2) = 24.57) although, mean value of the two groups is in significant difference from mean value of experimental group with time interval (p>0.05). In general, obtained results can be explained in this manner that creating a time interval can be along with reduction of proximity defenses (distraction, denial, etc.) and increase in accessibility of unconscious thoughts of death that can result in unconscious defenses in level of self-esteem.