Emotional responses to mortality salience: Behavioral and ERPs evidence.

ABSTRACT: Terror Management Theory (TMT) suggests that death-related thoughts activate proximal defense which allows people to suppress or rationalize death awareness. So far there is no direct evidence to support the emotional response in the proximal defense process. The current research aimed to address this issue by examining behavioral (e.g., accuracy and reaction time) and neural responses (e.g., P1 and N400 amplitude) related to emotional arousal following death-related thoughts during proximal defense. Before engaged in emotional words (e.g., anxiety, fear and neutral) judgment task, participants answered questions that referred to emotional and physical changes about death to induce mortality salience (MS). In the control condition, participants received similar instructions concerning the

SUBMITTER: Huang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7968674 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature