Understanding Increased Prosocial Behavior under Mortality Salience in the Perspective of Terror Management Theory

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220704.103How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Prosocial behavior; Mortality salience; Terror management theory; Self-esteem defense; Worldview defense

Abstract

Prosocial behavior is significant for both individuals and society, bringing factors increasing social behavior into the limelight of researches. However, mortality salience, which triggers increased prosocial behavior as a defense to conquer death-related anxiety under the awareness of death, is neglected in prosocial activities. Aiming to discover the role of mortality salience in affecting prosocial behavior, this paper clarifies the correlation under the perspective of terror management theory, providing a complete and thorough review for future researches. This paper explores that individuals’ prosocial behavior can be facilitated when mortality salience is triggered. Two mechanisms, worldview defense and self-esteem defense, proposed initially by the terror management theory, act in response to alleviate people’s death-related anxiety, providing theoretical support for the role of mortality salience boosting prosocial behavior. In worldview defense mechanism, individuals conduct prosocial activities to build a just world, protecting their extant worldview; in self-esteem defense mechanism, individuals do prosocial behavior to transcend themselves as well as to maintain a positive public image.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Han Wang
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/07/11
TI  - Understanding Increased Prosocial Behavior under Mortality Salience in the Perspective of Terror Management Theory
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Mental Health, Education and Human Development (MHEHD 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 566
EP  - 571
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220704.103
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220704.103
ID  - Wang2022
ER  -