Effects of existential anxiety and self-esteem on the perception of others

Previous research has demonstrated that when people are led to think about death they later exhibit more polarized judgments of ingroup and outgroup members. This reaction has been interpreted as an attempt to defend against existential anxiety by seeing oneself as a secure member of a meaning-conveying cultural group. This study examined the moderating influence of self-esteem and found that the polarization effect in response to mortality primes was most pronounced for high self-esteem individuals. An additional manipulation of meaninglessness-anxiety was unsuccessful in producing polarization, lending support to the theoretical centrality of death concerns. We discuss the relevance of these findings to terror management theory (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991).