The protective identity: Evidence that mortality salience heightens the clarity and coherence of the self-concept
Section snippets
Distinguishing self-concept structuring from self-enhancement
As mentioned, although the motives for self-concept structure and self-esteem are empirically separable, there is some evidence that self-concept clarity promotes positive self-evaluations (e.g., Campbell et al., 2003). To specifically test the terror management function of self-concept structure, we therefore designed the current studies to empirically distinguish between MS-induced self-concept structuring and the previously documented effects of MS on self-enhancement. First, we used diverse
Specifying the role of death concerns
We claim that the hypothesized MS effects on self-concept structuring are due specifically to concerns about death. However, research linking structural aspects of the self with affective and stress-related outcomes (e.g., Linville, 1985, Linville, 1987, Showers, 1992) raises the alternative possibility that these effects are due to a generalized reaction to reminders of any aversive or uncertain outcome. Although plausible, this explanation is challenged by a large body of evidence that MS
Study 1: identity concerns
We initially examined the terror management function of self-concept structure by testing whether MS increases people’s concern with seeking a clear personal identity. Participants primed with either death or intense pain wrote short autobiographies that were coded for the prevalence of identity concerns. The foregoing analysis suggests that MS will increase identity concerns specifically among high-PNS participants, and so we measured PNS to assess this possibility. We coded autobiographies
Study 2: self-clarity
Campbell (1990) discussed self-clarity as the possession of clearly articulated characteristics, and she measured it as the tendency to characterize oneself at either extreme of bipolar trait continua as opposed to the more ambiguous middle. One particularly useful feature of Campbell’s measure for our present purposes – in light of the alternative possibility that MS-induced self-structuring is confounded with self-enhancement – is that it assesses self-clarity independent of self-enhancement
Study 3: self-complexity
Given the previous effects of MS enhancing identity concerns and self-clarity among those high in PNS, might parallel effects emerge for people’s expressions of self-complexity? Linville, 1985, Linville, 1987 defines high self-complexity as the possession of many self-descriptive aspects (e.g., me-at-school) characterized by relatively distinct sets of traits (e.g., hard-working). Low self-complexity, in contrast, entails having fewer self-aspects that share overlapping traits. Self-complexity
Study 4: causal coherence in recent experience
The self-concept includes, in addition to broad knowledge of interwoven characteristics, a vast store of self-relevant experiences. Habermas and Bluck, 2000, McAdams, 2001 propose that coherence in the self-concept is largely sustained by organizing elements of experience over time into cause-and-effect relationships. Insofar as coherent conceptions of experience serve a terror management function, then MS should increase people’s efforts to perceive a coherent causal sequence of events in
Study 5: connecting past events to the current self
In Study 5 we continued our investigation of the motivation for organizing personal experiences across time, but now with emphasis on the organization of events over the broader span of one’s personal history. Multiple authors have argued that people sustain coherence in the self-concept in large part by integrating memories of past events with one’s current sense of self (e.g., McAdams, 2001). Inasmuch as this coherence protects the individual against mortality concerns, then MS should
General discussion
Five studies assessed whether a coherent self-identity serves a terror management function by examining the effect of mortality salience (MS) and individual differences in personal need for structure (PNS) on diverse means of clarifying and integrating conceptions of one’s personal characteristics and experiences over time. In Study 1, high-PNS participants responded to MS by spontaneously expressing more concern with a clear narrative self-understanding. Study 2 provided a conceptual
Conclusions
The present research shows that the management of mortality concerns plays a significant role in the structuring of self-knowledge in well-defined, contextually unified, and temporally coherent ways among those chronically disposed to structured knowledge. Diverse strategies for self-concept structuring are apparently united by a common distal motive: defending against threatening mortality concerns in individuals largely dependent on epistemic structure. Thus, in addition to serving multiple
Acknowledgement
We thank Natasha Kolosowsky and Allison Furman for their help with data collection.
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