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Are we truly special and unique? A replication of Goldenberg et al. (2001)
Abstract
According to the mortality salience hypothesis of terror management theory, reminders of our future death increase the necessity to validate our cultural worldview and to enhance our self-esteem. In Experiment 2 of the study ‘I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness’, Goldenberg et al. (Goldenberg et al. 2001 J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 130 , 427–435. ( doi:10.1037/0096-3445.130.3.427 )) observed that participants primed with questions about their death provided more positive evaluations to an essay describing humans as distinct from animals than control participants presented with questions regarding another aversive situation. In a replication of this experiment conducted with 128 volunteers, we did not observe evidence for a mortality salience effect.
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![Figure 1. Reanalysis of Burke et al. [3]. (a) Funnel plot of effect sizes against their standard errors. Data points inside the grey triangle are non-significant in a two-tailed test with α = 0.05. The red line represents Egger's regression test for funnel plot asymmetry. (b) Distribution of the ratio between each effect size and its standard error. Values larger than 1.96 (denoted by the red vertical line) are statistically significant in a two-tailed test with α = 0.05.](/paper-figures/e19aee2a7e9e4c57834c909889863304/are-we-truly-special-and-unique-a-replication-of-goldenberg-i-et-al-i-2001-figure-1.jpg)
![Figure 2. Results of the present study. Each red point represents the average essay evaluation from an individual participant. The darker bars summarize the results of the original study by Goldenberg et al. ([9], Study 2), whereas the lighter bars summarize the results of the present study. Error bars denote 95% confidence intervals.](/paper-figures/d76a8a1fe0bd41a089f2d8db251b3aea/are-we-truly-special-and-unique-a-replication-of-goldenberg-i-et-al-i-2001-figure-2.jpg)
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“Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al. (2019; 64 participants per cell) failed to replicate a study by Goldenberg et al. (2001; 10 participants per cell) testing the idea that participants under MS should react with more positive evaluations of an essay describing humans as distinct from animals.”
From Do Salient Social Norms Moderate Mortality Salience Effects? A (Challenging) Meta-Analysis of Terror Management Studies (2023) · cites this paper as Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al., 2019
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Citations
Cites
The Causes and Consequences of a Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror Management Theory
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986) · Public Self and Private Self · doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10 · Cited by 2,326
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Dienes, Z. (2014) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00781 · Cited by 1,998
Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997) · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60016-7 · Cited by 1,505
Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research
Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/1088868309352321 · Cited by 1,188
Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Chatel, D. (1992) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.2.212 · Cited by 487 · cited 1×
“[4,7]), tend to give a larger amount of hot sauce to a person who disagrees with their worldview [8], evaluate more positively an essay that presents humans as unique and different from other animals [9], and report a stronger desire for offspring [10].”
McGregor, H. A., Lieberman, J. D., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., Simon, L., & Pyszczynski, T. (1998) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.3.590 · Cited by 403
Contextual sensitivity in scientific reproducibility
Van Bavel, J. J., Mende-Siedlecki, P., Brady, W. J., & Reinero, D. A. (2016) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1521897113 · Cited by 398
Greenberg, J., Vail, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2014) · Advances in Motivation Science · doi:10.1016/bs.adms.2014.08.003 · Cited by 109
Researcher Effects on Mortality Salience Research: A Meta-Analytic Moderator Analysis
Yen, C.-L., & Cheng, C.-P. (2013) · Death Studies · doi:10.1080/07481187.2012.682290 · Cited by 30
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Defending one's worldview under mortality salience: Testing the validity of an established idea
Schindler, S., Reinhardt, N., & Reinhard, M.-A. (2021) · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104087 · Cited by 40
Mortality salience effects fail to replicate in traditional and novel measures
Sætrevik, B., & Sjåstad, H. (2022) · Meta-Psychology · doi:10.15626/mp.2020.2628 · Cited by 35
Schindler, S., Hilgard, J., Fritsche, I., Burke, B., & Pfattheicher, S. (2023) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/10888683221107267 · Cited by 43
“…through meta-analysis and inspection for publication bias seems advisable, given the lack of preregistered replication attempts on this idea and given that recent replication attempts of other MS findings have not been uniformly successful (Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al., 2019; Schindler et al., 2021).”
BackgroundInfluentialQi, J. (2023) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/01461672221081270 · Cited by 10
Chen, L., Benjamin, R., Guo, Y., Lai, A., & Heine, S. J. (2023) · Research Square · doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-1254756/v1 · Cited by 5
Arendsen, J. L., Brugman, B. C., van Koningsbruggen, G. M., & Fransen, M. L. (2025) · International Journal of Consumer Studies · doi:10.1111/ijcs.70056 · Cited by 4
“Furthermore, multiple other studies also failed to replicate findings of MS effects on a variety of worldview-confirming and - opposing essays (Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al. 2019; Sætrevik and Sjåstad 2022; Schindler et al. 2021; Treger et al. 2023).”
Existential threat and responses to emotional displays of ingroup and outgroup members
Wessler, J., van der Schalk, J., Hansen, J., Klackl, J., Jonas, E., Fons, M., Doosje, B., & Fischer, A. (2023) · Group Processes & Intergroup Relations · doi:10.1177/13684302221128229 · Cited by 3
“An important area for future research is to directly or conceptually replicate these findings, especially in light of current failure to replicate classical terror management findings (Klein et al., 2019; Rodríguez-Ferreiro et al., 2019).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Rodríguez-Ferreiro, J., Barberia, I., González-Guerra, J., & Vadillo, M. A.
- Affiliations
- Departament de Cognició, Desenvolupament i Psicologia de l'Educació, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Departamento de Psicología Básica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- ORCID
- Vadillo, Miguel A.
- Venue
- Royal Society Open Science
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2019-11
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 191114
- ISSN
- 2054-5703
- PMC
- PMC6894591
- Cited by
- 19
- References
- 9
- Language
- en
- Funders
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (PSI2016-75776-R, PSI2016-80061-R, PSI2017-85159-P)
- Consejería de Educación, Juventud y Deporte, Comunidad de Madrid (2016-T1/SOC-1395)
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