Fighting Death With Death: The Buffering Effects of Learning That Worldview Violators Have Died

Abstract

According to terror management theory, the annihilation of people who threaten one's worldview should serve the function of defending that worldview. The present research assessed this hypothesis. A sample of Christian participants read either a worldview-threatening news article reporting on the Muslimization of Nazareth or a nonthreatening article about the aurora borealis. Half of the participants in the worldview-threat condition were informed at the end of the article that a number of Muslims had died in a plane crash on their way to Nazareth. Although reading the threatening news article increased death-thought accessibility and worldview defense relative to reading the neutral article, these increases were not observed among participants who learned that a number of Muslims were dead. Implications for understanding protracted intergroup conflict are discussed.