jonas et al 2002

10.1177/014616702236834PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETINJonas et al. / THE SCROOGE EFFECT

The Scrooge Effect: Evidence That Mortality SalienceIncreases Prosocial Attitudes and Behavior

Eva JonasLudwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Jeff SchimelUniversity of Alberta

Jeff GreenbergUniversity of Arizona

Tom PyszczynskiUniversity of Colorado, Colorado Springs

From the perspective of terror management theory, reminders ofmortality should intensify the desire to express culturally pre-scribed prosocial attitudes and engage in culturally prescribedprosocial behaviors. Two studies supported these hypotheses. InStudy 1, people were interviewed in close proximity to a funeralhome or several blocks away and were asked to indicate their atti-tudes toward two charities they deemed important. Those whowere interviewed in front of the funeral home reported morefavorability toward these charities than those who were inter-viewed several blocks away. In Study 2, the authors found thatfollowing mortality salience, people gave more money to a charitysupporting an American cause than people who had beenexposed to an aversive control topic. However, mortality saliencehad no effect on the amount of money given to a foreign cause.Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell strait upon thebed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, un-wept, uncared for, was the body of this man. . . . Oh cold,cold, rigid dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, anddress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command:for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, andhonoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thydread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is notthat the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; itis not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the handwas open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm,and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike Shadow, strike!And see his good deeds springing up from the wound, tosow the world with life immortal.

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1950, pp. 115-116)

At Christmas time, one of the most cherished and fre-quently told stories in Western culture is Charles Dick-ens’s A Christmas Carol. In this story, the ghost of Christ-mas past and the ghost of Christmas present showEbenezer Scrooge how his cruelty and selfishness hasadversely affected his own life and the lives of others.However, it is not until the ghost of Christmas futureshows Scrooge a glimpse of his own future, inscribed onthe head of a tombstone, that his stinginess and greedgive way to benevolence and compassion for others.Dickens is telling us that one should value kindness andconcern for others over selfishness and material richesor else die an insignificant and lonely death.

In other words, by doing the right things, Scrooge wasable to manage his terror of absolute annihilation. Andso, in this 19th-century story, we can see a literary presag-ing of terror management theory (TMT), which pro-poses that self-esteem, the belief that one is a valuableperson within the context of one’s cultural conception of

Authors’ Note: This research was supported in part by National ScienceFoundation (NSF) Grants SBR-9601366, SBR-9601474, SBR-9731626,and SBR-9729946 as well a grant from the German Science Foundation(Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [DFG]), Jo. 388/1-1. The contri-butions of the first two authors were equivalent. We thank Jaime Valgerfor her work as an experimenter in Study 2. Correspondence for thisarticle should be addressed to Eva Jonas, Institute of Psychology, SocialPsychology Unit, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Leopoldstr. 13,80802 Munich, Germany; e-mail: [email protected].

PSPB, Vol. 28 No. 10, October 2002 1342-1353DOI: 10.1177/014616702236834© 2002 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

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reality, provides protection from the fear of death(Becker, 1971, 1973; Greenberg, Solomon, &Pyszczynski, 1997; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski,1991). Of interest, whereas most prior TMT research hasfocused on negative or socially destructive consequencesof confronting one’s mortality, such as prejudice, bias,and aggression, Dickens’s story hypothesizes a construc-tive consequence of mortality salience: If generousbehavior helps to restore the belief that one is a mean-ingful and valuable contributor to one’s cultural concep-tion of reality, then reminders of mortality shouldencourage people (perhaps even the “Scrooges” of theworld) to be kinder and more benevolent to others. Theprimary purpose of the two studies reported here was toassess this Dickensian hypothesis.

TMT and Research

TMT, which is derived from the writings and analysisof Ernest Becker (1962, 1971, 1973), posits that psycho-logical needs are an outgrowth of the existentialdilemma that humans are thrust into from birth. Similarto other living organisms, human beings have an instinctfor self-preservation and survival. Unlike other organ-isms, human beings possess intellectual capacities thatmake them painfully aware that one day they will die.This pairing of an instinctive desire for continued lifewith awareness of the inevitability of death creates thepotential for paralyzing terror. Cultural conceptions ofreality evolved, in part, to provide protection against thismost basic of all human fears. At the most fundamentallevel, these conceptions of reality provide people with asense of meaning, that life is significant and permanentand consists of more than taking in food, expellingwaste, and temporarily clinging to survival on a clump ofdirt and rock hurtling through space. From the perspec-tive of TMT, protection from death-related fear is pro-vided by a dual-component cultural anxiety buffer con-sisting of (a) a cultural worldview, which provides ameaningful, orderly, stable conception of reality, stan-dards, and values through which one can feel valuable,and a promise of death transcendence that can be eitherliteral (e.g., heaven, nirvana) or symbolic (e.g., publica-tions, artwork) for those who live up to these standards ofvalue and (b) self-esteem, which is the belief that one iscurrently living up to cultural standards. Because of theimportant role that these structures play in protectingpeople from existential fear, a great deal of behavior isaimed at sustaining these structures and defending themagainst threats.

Throughout the past dozen years a substantialamount of evidence has been gathered in support ofTMT’s primary hypotheses. The first central hypothesisderived from TMT is that self-esteem serves as a bufferagainst anxiety. A large body of evidence is consistent

with this idea. Trait self-esteem is negatively correlatedwith trait anxiety and anxiety-related problems, andthreats to self-esteem increase anxiety (for a review, seeSolomon et al., 1991). Most important, studies designedspecifically to test this hypothesis have shown that bol-stering people’s self-esteem reduces both physiologicalarousal and self-reports of anxiety in response to graphicdepictions of death and painful electric shocks andreduces defensive distortions to deny one’s vulnerabilityto an early death (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1993;Greenberg, Solomon, et al., 1992). Furthermore, experi-mentally manipulated and naturally occurring high self-esteem has been shown to reduce defensive responses toreminders of death (e.g., Arndt & Greenberg, 1999;Harmon-Jones et al., 1997).

The second central hypothesis derived from TMT isthat if faith in the cultural worldview and self-esteemfunction to protect people from anxiety about death,then reminders of this primary fear should increase peo-ple’s need for these psychological structures. To date,more than 80 studies conducted in seven different coun-tries have supported variants of this hypothesis (for areview, see Greenberg et al., 1997). The bulk of thesestudies have demonstrated that mortality salienceincreases positive reactions to those who uphold or vali-date the individual’s worldview and negative reactions tothose who violate or challenge the individual’s worldview(Greenberg et al., 1990; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solo-mon, Simon, & Breus, 1994; Greenberg, Simon,Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992; Ochsmann &Mathy, 1994; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon,Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989). Other research consistentwith the mortality salience hypothesis has shown thatreminding people of death increases adherence to cul-tural norms (Greenberg, Porteus, Simon, Pyszczynski, &Solomon, 1995; Rosenblatt et al., 1989), heightens esti-mates of social consensus for culturally relevant attitudes(Pyszczynski et al., 1996), and increases optimal distinc-tiveness strivings (Simon et al., 1997). Mortality saliencealso has been shown to increase behaviors directly associ-ated with self-esteem striving, such as risky drivingamong those who are highly invested in their drivingability (Taubman Ben-Ari, Florian, & Mikulincer, 1999),focus on bodily appearance for those who take pride intheir physical appearance (Goldenberg, McCoy,Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000), and identifi-cation with successful groups and disidentification fromunsuccessful groups (e.g., Dechesne, Greenberg, Arndt,& Schimel, 2000).

Although this short summary of terror managementfindings illustrates that mortality salience affects a widerange of different areas in human life, one should notethat this only applies to worldview-relevant domains. Forexample, when testing the effect of the violation of cul-

Jonas et al. / THE SCROOGE EFFECT 1343

tural norms, Rosenblatt et al. (1989, Study 2) questionedif following mortality salience participants also wouldshow an inclination to derogate any other person whohad, however, not violated any social or cultural rule.The results revealed that although mortality salience ledto harsher reactions to a person who violated culturalnorms it did not influence the evaluation of a neutralperson (in this case, the experimenter). In addition,Rosenblatt et al. (1989, Study 4) found that mortalitysalience did not affect the evaluation of non-worldview-relevant positive or negative events or the monetary esti-mates of different consumer products. Indeed, manynormal, everyday behaviors, such as going to the bank tomake a deposit, choosing a meal at a nice restaurant,driving to work in the morning, judging a work of art, orgoing for a swim, may be unrelated to and unaffected bypeople’s concerns about mortality. However, if one con-siders himself or herself to be a shrewd financier, a con-noisseur of fine foods, a skillful driver, or a future Olym-pic swimmer, then such everyday behaviors take ondeeper meaning as ways of feeling personally valuableand heroic within the broader culture. When such every-day thoughts and behaviors become personal avenuesfor self-esteem, mortality salience is thought to intensifysuch behaviors.

TMT and Prosocial Behavior

Despite the large amount of evidence that has accu-mulated in support of TMT, the tenor of most of thiswork is that mortality salience increases negative reac-tions to those who are different and exaggerates variousforms of self-serving behavior. However, along withethnocentric biases and egotism, acts involving kindnessand generosity toward others also should affirm people’sfaith in their cultural worldview and self-esteem. Mostpeople learn from early on that living up to standards ofbenevolence and concern for those who are less fortu-nate than ourselves is honorable and highly desirable.For example, the Bible speaks clearly that one should“love thy neighbor as thy self” through well-known para-bles such as the Good Samaritan. Similarly, famous fig-ures such as Mother Teresa and Ghandi exemplify thebenefits of living a humble, self-sacrificing, and benevo-lent life. Moreover, as was mentioned at the outset of thisarticle, stories such as A Christmas Carol warn us that self-ishness and greed may lead to a lonely life and an earlydeath, whereas kindness and compassionate giving leadsto happiness and may even grant postponement or tran-scendence of one’s death. The message transmitted bythese historical figures, religious parables, and popularstories is clear: We are good and safe if we live up to stan-dards of generosity, kindness, and unselfishness and weare bad and in peril if we fail to live up to these standards.

Indeed, research shows that people generally acceptthese cultural prescriptions of value and maintain theirself-esteem by living up to them. For example, researchhas shown that helping can be increased by anticipatedsocial approval and salient social norms (e.g., Berkowitz,1972; Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991; Kallgren, Reno,& Cialdini, 2000; Macaulay, 1975; Moss & Page, 1972;Satow, 1975). Other research has shown that peoplerepair their self-esteem after threats by engaging in help-ful behavior. For example, Steele (1975) found that afterbeing criticized for their poor driving ability, womenwere more likely to promise to help out with a commu-nity project. Similarly, Brown and Smart (1991) foundthat following a recent failure, people with high self-esteem rated themselves higher on traits that exempli-fied their kindness and generosity and spent more timehelping a research assistant.

From a TMT perspective, the belief that one is livingup to the standards and values set forth by one’s culturalworldview provides protection from deeply rooted fear.To the extent that prosocial behaviors are valued byone’s culture and contribute to self-esteem, acting inways that are helpful, giving, and benevolent shouldserve a terror management function. However, it may bethat some forms of helping provide better protectionfrom existential concerns than others. According toTMT, people develop their own individualized ways ofachieving a sense of personal value within the context ofthe broader cultural framework. Some people try to begood Republicans, Christians, or educators, whereasothers gain a sense of value by constructing buildings,playing music, or practicing medicine. Thus, people findvalue and significance by adhering to their own uniqueindividualized set of standards and values that they haveabstracted from the wide array of cultural values to whichthey have been exposed. In support of this point, a vari-ety of studies have shown that the effects of mortalitysalience depend on the content of the individual’sworldview (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990; Greenberg,Simon, et al., 1992; Rosenblatt et al., 1989; Simon, Arndt,Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1998).

From a TMT perspective, then, prosocial behaviorthat conforms to one’s personalized belief system wouldoffer the best protection against existential fear. Basedon this reasoning, Study 1 was designed to test thehypothesis that a subtle real-world reminder of mortalitywould increase the favorability of people’s attitudestoward charities. Study 2 was designed to more directlyexamine the helping behavior (as opposed to helping-relevant attitudes) and to test the hypothesis that mortal-ity salience would have a greater effect on donations tocharities that benefited ingroup members than to chari-ties than benefited outgroup members.

1344 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

STUDY 1

Following Pyszczynski et al. (1996), Study 1 was a fieldstudy in which pedestrians walking on the street wereinterviewed in front of a funeral home or several blocksaway from the funeral home. Their attitudes toward twodifferent charitable organizations that they deemedmoderately important constituted the dependent vari-able. We predicted that mortality salient participants,that is, those interviewed in front of the funeral home,would exhibit more favorable attitudes toward the twocharities than would participants interviewed away fromthe funeral home.

Method

Participants. The participants were 17 male and 14female pedestrians who were solicited to take part in ashort survey while walking down a street in Boulder, Col-orado. All of the participants were U.S. citizens.

Procedure. Participants who were walking on a trajec-tory that was anticipated to take them past a funeralhome were randomly assigned to be interviewed by amale interviewer either directly in front of the funeralhome or approximately three blocks (150 m) away fromit. The funeral home was a brick building with a largesign clearly visible to the pedestrian that read “Howe’sMortuary.” At the time the study was being conducted,there was masonry work being done on the building nearthe sign, which drew pedestrians’ attention to the sign asthey passed by. As in previous mortality salience studiesusing this manipulation (Pyszczynski et al., 1996), theinterviewer positioned himself so that the participantswere forced to face the front of the building so that theycould clearly see the sign.

The experimenter first asked participants if theywould be willing to take about 5 mins of their time tocomplete a short survey. Once they agreed, the experi-menter proceeded by giving them a form with a shortdescription of 10 different charities and told them torank order the charities according to which ones theythought were most important (1 = most important, 10 =least important).1 Once they had completed this task, theexperimenter told the participants that this survey waspart of a research project for a class. Thus, in exchangefor participating, they would have $5 donated in theirname to a charity of their choice. The experimenter tookthe participants’ list of charities, circled the charities par-ticipants’ ranked number “3” and “4” on the list, andthen said, “It just so happens that we are donating moneyto these two charities—so what I need you to do now ischoose which of these two charities you would like tohave us donate $5 in your name.” Once the participantsmade their decision, the experimenter had them fill outa receipt that asked them to print and sign their name,

the date, and the name of the charity they had chosen.The experimenter then handed the participants a ques-tionnaire asking several questions about the chosen andnonchosen charity.2 These questions asked, “How bene-ficial is this charity to society?” “How much do you thinksociety needs this charity?” and “How desirable is thischarity to you personally?” All responses were made on a10-point scale (1 = not at all, 10 = very much). Once theparticipants completed these questions, the experi-menter debriefed them about the true purpose of thestudy.

Results

For each of the three attitude items, we collapsed par-ticipants’ ratings for the chosen and nonchosen chari-ties to form a favorability score for each of the items. Wethen performed a principal components analysis onthese item scores and found that each of them loadedheavily on a single factor (eigenvalue = 2.45). The factorloadings for each of the items were .92, .94, and .84,respectively. We therefore summed these three items toform a single composite measure of favorability towardcharitable organizations. A t test performed on thisfavorability composite yielded a significant effect of ourmortality salience treatment, t(31) = 2.06, p < .05, indicat-ing that mortality salience increased the favorability ofparticipants’ attitudes toward the charitable organiza-tions. The means and standard deviations for the com-posite measure and the individual items are presented inTable 1.3

Discussion

The results support the prediction derived fromTMT: When interviewed in front of a funeral home, andthereby reminded of mortality, people showed a morefavorable attitude toward charitable causes than wheninterviewed three blocks from the mortuary. Remindedof mortality, people judged charitable organizations thatwere important to them as more beneficial to society andmore desirable to them personally and indicated that


TABLE 1: Means and Standard Deviations for Participants’ Ratingsof the Charities in Study 1

Death Salience Control

M SD M SD

How beneficial is thischarity to society? 17.31 2.96 14.73 3.91

How much does societyneed this charity? 17.37 2.70 15.80 3.62

How desirable is this charityto you personally? 16.06 3.29 13.40 4.12

Favorability composite 50.75 7.60 43.93 10.68N 16 15

society needs those charities more. Thus, mortalitysalience leads to a more positive attitude toward organi-zations perceived to serve an important function in oursociety and to help others in need. According to TMT,cultural conceptions of reality serve to protect peoplefrom the fear of absolute annihilation. Therefore, whenreminded of death, cultural norms should become moreimportant to people and cultural values should becomemore valued. The findings of Study 1 extend previousfindings that mortality salience increases rewards recom-mended for a hero and punishment recommended for amoral transgressor (Florian & Mikulincer, 1997;Ochsmann & Reichelt, 1994; Rosenblatt et al., 1989) byshowing a similar effect of mortality salience on the valuepeople place on charitable organizations. Similar toDickens’s Mr. Scrooge, people who were reminded oftheir mortality by standing in front of a funeral homecame to view charitable giving in a more favorable light.

It is important, however, to determine whether thisincrease in favorable attitudes toward charities extendsto people’s actual charitable behavior. It is one thing tosay that charities are important and quite another tobehave in accordance with such attitudes. To see if peo-ple would put their money where their mouth is, Study 2assessed whether people would donate more money tocharitable organizations after being reminded ofmortality.

When we consider why people become more favor-able toward charities when reminded of their mortality,two possibilities emerge. Presumably, following deathsalience, people try to live up to cultural standards ofhelping as a means of upholding the moral principles oftheir cultural worldview. As we know from otherresearch, people who are religious donate more moneyto charitable causes, partly because of the belief that itwill lead to heavenly rewards and that this is part of one’sreligious duty (Myers, 1992). Other people are moti-vated by more abstract moral principles of fairness or jus-tice and concern with longer term changes in society(Radley & Kennedy, 1992). Both of these reasons for val-uing giving suggest that there is a connection betweendonating money to charities and feeling that one is agood person and a valuable member of society. Thus,mortality salience may increase people’s general motiva-tion to help others because doing so increases their per-ceptions that they are living up to their culturally derivedprinciples of “goodness” and morality.

However, we think that mortality salience would bemost likely to increase people’s motivation to help mem-bers of their ingroup. Many previous studies have shownthat mortality salience increases ingroup favoritism(e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990; Harmon-Jones, Greenberg,Solomon, & Simon, 1996; Nelson, Moore, Olivetti, &

Scott, 1997). There is also a good deal of evidence show-ing ingroup bias in helping behavior. For example,Brown (1978) showed that people donate more moneyto ingroup than outgroup causes and Gaertner, Dovidio,and Johnson (1982) showed that Whites are less likely tohelp Blacks than fellow Whites when their behavior isnot easily identifiable. In a study on charitable givingamong American Jews, it was found that the participantsgave a median amount of $175 per year to Jewish chari-ties versus $75 to non-Jewish charities (Rimor & Tobin,1990). Similarly, members of Black American churchesdonate more to Black charities and organizations notconnected to their church than to non-Black charities(Carson, 1990). These findings suggest that people pri-marily value helping fellow ingroup members in need;therefore, we would expect mortality salience to increasehelping for those within one’s own culture.

STUDY 2

To test this hypothesis, we conducted an experimentin which participants were reminded of their own deathor an aversive control topic (i.e., dental pain). After theexperiment ostensibly was over, we asked them whetherthey would be willing to support specific charitable orga-nizations the university was sponsoring by donatingmoney. All participants got a brochure in which oneAmerican and one international charity organizationwere described. If mortality salience generally increaseswillingness to help, we would expect a main effect: Par-ticipants in the mortality salience condition would givemore money to charities than participants in the controlcondition would give. On the other hand, if mortalitysalience only increases the willingness to give money tocharities that support one’s own culture then we wouldexpect an interaction: Participants in the mortalitysalience condition would donate more money to theAmerican charity than participants in the control condi-tion, whereas mortality salience would have little or noeffect on donations to international charities.

Method

Participants and design. Twenty-seven introductory psy-chology students (18 women and 9 men) from the Uni-versity of Arizona participated in this experiment for par-tial course credit. Three participants were dropped forsuspicion after indicating that they thought the experi-ment was concerned with whether people would donatemoney to charities. Two participants were dropped fromthe analysis because they were foreign students. Partici-pants were run in groups ranging in size from 3 to 5 andwere randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (mortalitysalience: death vs. dental pain) × 2 (charity: American vs.


international) factorial design with charity treated as arepeated-measures variable.

Procedure. After arriving to the experimental session,the experimenter told the participants that the study wasconcerned with how different personality measures wererelated and that they would complete a short packet ofpersonality measures. Before the experiment startedthey were given $1.50, ostensibly for participating in thisstudy. The reason for this ploy was to make sure all partic-ipants would have at least a small amount of money todonate to the charities they would learn about later inthe study. The participants were told that the currentstudy was sponsored by the National Science Foundation(NSF), which was in fact true, and that therefore we wererequired by the NSF to pay them for their participationin the study (which of course was not true). The experi-menter told participants that we were not able to givethem a lot of money but at least we could afford a littlesum for each person. She explained further that “tomake the distribution as fair as possible—across all thestudies—we have decided to give them one quarter foreach page they filled out.” Because there were six pagesin the packet, in addition to receiving credits for theirpsychology class, the participants also received six quar-ters. The experimenter explained that she wanted togive them the money before the experiment started sothat it would not take time at the end.

Participants were then ushered into individual cubi-cles to ensure their privacy, where they filled out the per-sonality questionnaires. First, they received a filler mea-sure and then a mortality salience or control treatment,which was titled “The Projective Life Attitudes Assess-ment.” The mortality salience treatment consisted ofhaving participants respond to two open-ended ques-tions: “Please briefly describe the emotions that thethought of your own death arouses in you” and “Jotdown, as specifically as you can, what you think will hap-pen to you as you physically die and once you are physi-cally dead.” In the control condition, we asked the samequestions with regard to dental pain. The experimenterwas blind to these manipulations. Participants thenresponded to two filler questionnaires consisting of onemood assessment (the PANAS-X) (Watson, Clark, &Tellegen, 1988) and a filler questionnaire about partici-pants’ sleeping and waking patterns to constitute a delaybetween the mortality salience manipulation and thedependent measure (cf. Greenberg et al., 1994).

After participants finished all of the questionnaires,the experimenter went into each cubicle and gave thema brochure and two envelopes. The experimenter wenton to explain that it might take a little longer until every-one was finished so while they were waiting she was won-dering if they could read a brochure. She explained that

in the last few weeks, the Psychology Department hadagreed to work with the university to help raise moneyfor some different charities. There were two specificcharities that the university was sponsoring. The bro-chure would tell them about each of these organizations.If they wanted to donate anything there were some enve-lopes on which the names of the charities were writtenand they could just put the money in the envelope of thecharity to which they wanted to donate and then dropthe envelope in a box on the floor. She emphasized thatit was totally up to them whether they wanted to make acontribution and that the contents of the envelopewould be completely anonymous. Then she closed thedoor of the cubicle and gave them privacy while theyread the brochure.

The brochure was titled “Support Charities as a Mem-ber of the University of Arizona Community” and startedby emphasizing that “the support of charitable organiza-tions was a cornerstone of American culture and that theUniversity of Arizona itself couldn’t succeed without thesupport of the community.” The brochure went on to saythat the university wanted to take part in the tradition ofsupporting a variety of charitable causes and thereby giv-ing back to the community. It was further explained thatthe university was asking its employees and students todonate money “to some organizations that werestrengthening our society by improving education andhelping young families, causes close to the heart of everyuniversity community.” Finally, it was emphasized thatevery little amount would help, no matter how small.Then, two specific charity organizations were described:one American and one international organization.From the description, it was clear that the Americanorganization helped people in the United States andthat the international organizations helped people out-side of the United States. To avoid making this differenti-ation too obvious, we chose two different charity areas:one about education and one about house building; thegoal in both areas was to help people in under-resourcedregions. The two organizations we included in the bro-chure were real charities. We made two different coun-terbalanced versions of the brochures such that one bro-chure included an American education charity and aninternational house-building charity, whereas the otherincluded an international education charity and anAmerican house-building charity. Each one of the twoenvelopes we gave to the participants together with thebrochure had the name of the corresponding organiza-tion on it.

After the participants finished reading the brochureand decided whether they wanted to donate money, theywere debriefed. Because we had to tell them that therequest of donating money was part of the experiment


and did not come from the university, they were offeredthe opportunity to get their money back in case theywanted to, but none of the participants retracted theirdonation. When all of the data for the study was col-lected, we donated the participants’ money to the appro-priate charities.

Results

Money donated. Our dependent measure was theamount of money participants donated to the differentcharities. We first performed a 2 (mortality salience:death vs. dental pain) × 2 (charity: American vs. interna-tional) × 2 (version: house building vs. education)ANOVA on the amount of money participants donatedto see if the different versions interacted with the otherconditions. The three-way interaction was not signifi-cant, F(1, 18) < 1.78, suggesting that the different ver-sions did not interfere with our results.4 We thereforecollapsed the money donated to the American versusinternational organizations across the two types of chari-ties (education vs. house building). We then submittedthis measure to a 2 (mortality salience) × 2 (charity)ANOVA with charity treated as a repeated-measures vari-able. However, an analysis of the distribution of partici-pants’ donations within each condition revealed thatthis measure did not meet the assumption of homogene-ity of variance for ANOVA. We therefore performed asquare-root transformation on the amount of moneyparticipants donated and then submitted this measureto the ANOVA. This analysis yielded no significant maineffect for mortality salience, F(1, 20) = 2.76, p > .11, orcharities, F(1, 20) < 1. However, there was a significantMortality Salience × Charity interaction, F(1, 20) = 7.06,p < .02.

Pairwise comparisons supported the prediction thatparticipants in the mortality salience condition gavemore money to the American charities than would participants in the control condition, t(20) = 4.08, p < .001.In contrast, mortality salience had no significant effecton the amount of money donated to the internationalcharities, t(20) < 1. Looked at differently, within the mor-tality salience conditions, mortality salience led to higherdonations to the American as opposed to the interna-tional charities, t(20) = 2.52, p < .03, whereas within thedental pain salience condition, there was no significantdifference in donation to the American as opposed tothe international charities, t(20) = 1.19, p > .20 (cellmeans and standard deviations of the transformed andnontransformed data are presented in Table 2).

Affect. To assess whether the mortality salience treat-ment affected participants’ mood, we performed t testson the various subscales of the PANAS-X (Watson et al.,1988). There was only a marginal effect of mortalitysalience on surprise t(20) = 2.05, p < .06, indicating that

participants experienced more surprise in the dentalpain condition. To assess whether feelings of surprisemediated our results, we conducted a 2 (mortalitysalience) × 2 (charity) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)using surprise as the covariate. This analysis revealed asignificant Mortality Salience × Charity interaction, indi-cating that surprise did not mediate our results. t testsperformed on the remaining subscales of the PANAS-X,including positive and negative affect, revealed no signif-icant differences (all ts < 1.31).

Discussion

The findings of Study 2 clearly illustrate the impactthat mortality salience has on prosocial behavior by dem-onstrating that mortality salience increased the amountof money people contributed to charitable organiza-tions. Moreover, Study 2 served to specify the conditionsunder which prosocial behavior occurred: After mortal-ity salience, people donated more money to charitiesthat supported projects in America but did not increasegiving to international projects. These results suggestthat mortality salience does not simply motivate peopleto behave according to a general norm of universal help-ing. Rather, when people are particularly concernedwith defending against the thought of their own death,they showed a strong bias toward charitable causes thatpromote their own culture.

This is consistent with findings of previous terrormanagement research showing that following remind-ers of mortality, people respond especially favorablytoward people and ideas that support their cultural affili-ations (Greenberg et al., 1990; Rosenblatt et al., 1989).Thus, in a sense, our results can be viewed as anothermanifestation of the tendency for mortality salience tolead to favoritism toward one’s own culture. However, allof the prior evidence of increased positive responsesafter mortality salience has assessed self-reported atti-tudes and intentions; the finding of increased monetarycontributions to American charities constitutes the first


TABLE 2: Means and Standard Deviations for the Absolute andTransformed Amount of Money Donated in Study 2

Salience

Death Dental Pain

Charity Organization M SD M SD

Absolute amountAmerican charity $1.44 $1.38 $0.30 $0.38International charity $0.88 $1.47 $0.49 $0.44

Transformed amountAmerican charity $1.03 $0.64 $0.38 $0.41International charity $0.63 $0.72 $0.57 $0.42

N 11 11

evidence of a positive behavioral effect of mortalitysalience, and one involving personal costs to theparticipants.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Two studies supported the idea that terror manage-ment concerns can contribute to prosocial inclinations.Study 1 demonstrated that reminding people of deathleads to a more favorable attitude toward charities.Study 2 found that mortality salience increased actualprosocial behavior in terms of giving more money tocharity organizations, but this only occurred with chari-ties that benefit one’s own culture. Mortality saliencehad no effect on giving when the beneficiaries of thiskindness were not members of one’s ingroup. Thus,Study 2 supported the culture-specific hypothesis con-cerning the effects of mortality salience on helping. Justas Ebenezer Scrooge responded to a dramatic confronta-tion with his mortality by helping his employees, theirfamilies, and other members of his community, so toodid participants in Study 2 respond to an admittedly lessdramatic reminder of their mortality by giving more toingroup charities, helping those in their own culture.

Whereas Study 1 showed the effect of mortalitysalience on attitudes toward charities in the context of afield study in which people were interviewed either infront of or several blocks away from a funeral home,Study 2 was conducted under the controlled conditionsof the laboratory, comparing the effects of filling out aquestionnaire about death-related issues to a controlgroup in which participants were reminded of a non-death-related aversive topic (dental pain). The converg-ing findings across two very different operationalizationsof mortality salience strongly implicate death-relatedthoughts in these effects, particularly in conjunctionwith a large body of other research utilizing these andother operationalizations and control conditions (see,e.g., Greenberg et al., 1997; Greenberg, Schimel, Mar-tens, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 2001).

The Contribution to the TerrorManagement Literature

This research provides evidence of mortality salienceaffecting yet another type of human behavior: prosocialaction. In doing so, the present findings also add to asmall but growing body of evidence of behavioral effectsof mortality salience (Greenberg et al., 1995; McGregoret al., 1998; Ochsmann & Mathy, 1994; Taubman Ben-Ariet al., 1999). These studies highlight the role terror man-agement concerns play not only in people’s attitudes butalso in how they actually behave in various situations.

Positive effects of mortality salience. In addition, ourresults expand on current TMT research by emphasizing

the positive impact that terror management concernscan have on human behavior. TMT studies so far havepredominantly focused on negative implications of mor-tality salience, such as increased prejudice (e.g.,Greenberg et al., 1990), aggression (McGregor et al.,1998), or racism (Greenberg et al., 2001). Althoughthere are some studies that also indicate positive effectsfollowing mortality salience, such as increased liking andrewards for those who support one’s worldview oruphold cultural standards (see, e.g., Rosenblatt et al.,1989), these results were usually accompanied by anincreased disliking of those who represent a differentculture (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990). In contrast to thisprior research, the present Study 2 showed that althoughmortality salience only increased participants’ willing-ness to give more money to charities of their own culture,this was not accompanied by lessened donations to chari-ties that help foreign cultures. For international chari-ties, there was simply no difference between participantsin the mortality salience and the control condition.

We believe that by demonstrating positive effects ofmortality salience, this work provides an initial steptoward an important new direction for terror manage-ment research. Although most prior writing andresearch on terror management has focused on defen-sive responses, people in their everyday lives spend con-siderable energy bolstering their faiths in their beliefsand their sense of self-worth through a wide variety ofgood works. Indeed, theorists have suggested that rais-ing and passing on values to children; personal produc-tivity, such as artistic, scientific, and technologicalachievements; passing on one’s knowledge and skillsthrough teaching; and contributions to charities andpolitical and social causes are all positive ways in whichpeople can achieve and sustain a sense of death transcen-dence (e.g., Adler, 1930; Erickson, 1950/1963; Lifton,1983; McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992; Peterson & Stew-art, 1993; Rank, 1932/1989). Perhaps this function ofaltruistic acts helps explain why prosocial behavior is val-ued in all cultures and prescribed so strongly in all themajor religions of the world. More empirical work onsuch approach-oriented responses to the knowledge ofour mortality is sorely needed.

On the ubiquity of mortality salience effects. Before consid-ering the implications of this research for prosocialbehavior, we think a legitimate question needs to beaddressed.5 Now that mortality salience effects havebeen found for prosocial as well as antisocial actions, isthere anything mortality salience does not affect? Inother words, does mortality salience simply intensify allcognitive and behavioral propensities? The theory andresearch does suggest that mortality concerns can affecta wide range of behaviors, but they also provide a clearanswer to this question: no. Theoretically, mortality


salience should only intensify attitudes, judgments, andbehaviors that serve to bolster one’s worldview and self-esteem, and a large body of research strongly supportsthis answer.

Certainly, a very wide range of attitudes, judgments,and behaviors can potentially serve to bolster aspects ofan individual’s worldview and one’s self-worth. However,the theory suggests two broad sets of conditions underwhich mortality salience should not affect cognition andbehavior. The first is when the cognitions and behaviorssimply are not relevant to bolstering the individual’sworldview or self-worth. The first evidence for this pointwas obtained in the first set of mortality salience studies.Rosenblatt et al. (1989) found that whereas mortalitysalience increased punitive responses toward a prosti-tute and rewards for a hero, it did not intensify liking forthe experimenter or ratings of worldview-irrelevant posi-tive and negative events.

A wide variety of studies since then also have shownthat whether mortality salience affects cognitions andbehaviors depends very much on individual and situa-tional factors that make particular judgments andactions either relevant or irrelevant to the individual’sworldview or self-worth. A list of study findings that, inthe context of theoretically specified significant interac-tions, demonstrate cognitions and behaviors notaffected by mortality salience includes evidence thatmortality salience does not affect (a) problem-solvingbehavior, unless the problems required inappropriateuse of cultural icons to be solved (Greenberg et al.,1995); (b) Whites’ liking for a neutrally presented Afri-can American (Schimel et al., 1999); (c) low neurotics’ratings of the appeal of physical sex (Goldenberg et al.,2000); (d) the reactions to a different other of partici-pants who highly valued tolerance or for whom toler-ance has been made salient (Greenberg, Simon, et al.,1992); (e) ratings of romantic partners and relationshipsin insecurely attached individuals (Mikulincer &Florian, 2000); (f) driving style of participants for whomdriving ability is irrelevant to self-worth (Taubman Ben-Ari et al., 1999); (g) ratings of a critic of one’s groupwhen ingroup identification is considered permeableand identification with a criticized group when identifi-cation is considered impermeable (Dechesne, Janssen, &van Knippenberg, 2000); and (h) psychological distanc-ing from a Hispanic person by White participants(Arndt, Greenberg, Schimel, Pyszczynski, & Solomon,2002).

The second set of conditions under which mortalitysalience is predicted to have no effects is when terrormanagement structures are very strong, such as whenself-worth is dispositionally high or situationally boosted.For example, under such conditions, mortality saliencehas been shown not to affect (a) pro-American bias in

Americans (Harmon-Jones et al., 1997), (b) self-percep-tions associated with a long life expectancy (Greenberget al., 1993), (c) driving style in participants for whomdriving ability is self-relevant (Taubman Ben-Ari et al.,1999), and (d) punitive reactions to moral transgressors(Mikulincer & Florian, 2000).

A final counterpoint to the idea that mortalitysalience is simply an intensifier of people’s tendencies isevidence that mortality salience leads to preferences thatare not evident or actually in the opposite direction inthe non-mortality-salient control conditions. For exam-ple, mortality salience has been shown to reverse thedirection of (a) Christians’ responses to fellow Christianand Jewish students (Greenberg et al., 1990), (b)Whites’ preferences for stereotypic and counterstereo-typic African Americans (Schimel et al., 1999), (c)Whites’ reactions to individuals who express White ver-sus Black racial pride (Greenberg et al., 2001), (d) guiltand social projection in response to creative versusnoncreative action (Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon,Pyszczynski, & Schimel, 1999), and (e) in the presentStudy 2, contributions to American versus foreign chari-ties. What these findings may indicate is that when peo-ple are not particularly concerned about maintainingfaith in their worldview and self-esteem, cognitive factorssuch as rational information processing or situationalfactors that are worldview irrelevant may guide behavior.However, when people are mortality salient, theyrespond in a manner that is worldview affirming and self-esteem bolstering.

Implications Regarding Prosocial Action

From a practical perspective, these two studies suggestthat people’s terror management concerns might beable to produce prosocial effects on a societal level, forexample, by increasing the amount of money donated tocharitable causes when the request is presented in thecontext of death reminders. Similar effects might beobtained with regard to public service advertisements orblood drives.

This research also may have implications for thinkingabout the influence of cultural organizations and institu-tions on human behavior. Study 2 demonstrates theeffect mortality salience has on support of different char-itable institutions, pointing to the important role thatcultural institutions may play in connecting values withbehavior. Following mortality salience, people did notdonate more money in general; they gave more only tocharities of their own American culture but not to chari-ties helping foreign cultures. This suggests that mortalitysalient participants may have followed the Americannorm of supporting American charities and, as a result,helped poor people in their own country rather thanpoor people in foreign countries. Given prior helping


research (e.g., Brown, 1978; Carson, 1990; Gaertneret al., 1982; Rimor & Tobin, 1990), it is likely that Ameri-cans primarily value helping those “at home.” Indeed,subsequent to Study 2, at the end of a class midterm, weasked a small sample from the same population “Howimportant do you think charities for poor people in for-eign countries are?” followed by the same question refer-ring to people in the United States. On a 4-point scalefrom not at all important to of great importance, the partici-pants rated charities for American poor people signifi-cantly higher in importance than charities for foreignpoor people, t(24) = 2.32, p < .02, means of M = 3.40 andM = 3.08, respectively. Thus, although American stu-dents in our sample did not view helping needy foreign-ers as unimportant, they viewed helping Americans asmore important, suggesting that this value is more cen-tral to their worldviews. The results of Study 2 can thus beviewed as further evidence that mortality salienceencourages behaviors most strongly prescribed by theindividual’s worldview.

The results of Study 2 also can be taken as consistentwith the strong connection between mortality salienceand the affiliation to one’s own culture emphasized byTMT. Because culture is the ultimate vehicle for sustain-ing a sense of death transcendence, and charity organi-zations help to ensure the preservation of one’s culture,supporting one’s culture’s own causes might serve a pro-tective function against the human fear of death andannihilation. Of course, given the results of our smallsurvey and the fact that some Americans do give to inter-national charities such as CARE, at least some Americansdo highly value helping those from other countries.Therefore, we would not rule out the possibility that forsome Americans or under some conditions, mortalitysalience may encourage helping for outgroup members.However, for these college students, the preference fol-lowing mortality salience was to help the American char-ity. This suggests a need for further research on the psy-chological functions of particular cultural institutions(cf. Gergen, 1982; Sampson, 1981; Tetlock, 1992).

Finally, these findings pertain to the broad issue of thedifferent goals prosocial behavior can serve. As Batsonand colleagues have long argued (e.g., Batson, 1990),the goal of prosocial behavior, particularly when arousedby feelings of empathic emotion, may simply be to helpthe other person. However, such behavior also may servea variety of more self-serving goals (e.g., Cialdini, Brown,Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997). The present researchsuggests that terror management may be one such goal.Prosocial actions can serve to bolster the individual’sfaith in his or her cultural worldview and sense of valuewithin it, especially when the helpful behavior is directedtoward one’s own culture. Although this may not seemquite as noble as pure altruism unbiased by one’s con-

nection to the person or group being helped, if, as Dick-ens’s story and this research suggest, the heightenedawareness of one’s own mortality can encourage the“Scrooges” of the world to become kinder to at leastsome of the “Tiny Tims,” should we quibble over the ori-gins of such transformations?

NOTES

1. The 10 charities used in Study 1 were as follows: Partnership for aDrug-Free America, Association for Retarded Citizens, Acid RainFoundation, National Alliance to End Homelessness, American Soci-ety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Congress on Racial Equal-ity, Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation, Keep America Beautiful,American Foundation for Aging Research (AFAR), and the NationalChild Safety Council.

2. A second hypothesis also was explored in this first study. We wereinitially interested in whether mortality salience would affect prefer-ences for the chosen versus nonchosen charity. This hypothesis wasderived from cognitive dissonance research showing that after peoplemake an important decision between two closely valued alternatives,the chosen alternative will be highly favored over the nonchosen alter-native. There was no support for this spreading of choice alternatives,either with or without mortality salience, thus, the classical free choicedissonance effect was not replicated, which rendered our attemptedtest of the terror management variation on it ambiguous. Therefore,this unsupported hypothesis is not discussed further.

3. We also performed t tests on the individual item composites. Thisanalysis revealed a significant effect of mortality salience for the firstand third item composite (i.e., “How beneficial is this charity to soci-ety” and “How desirable is this charity to you personally”), t(31) = 2.08,p < .05 and t(31) = 1.99, p < .06. A t test performed on the second item(i.e., “How much does society need this charity”) revealed the samepattern as the one with the other two items but was not statistically sig-nificant, t(31) = 1.38, p < .19.

4. We also performed a three-way (Mortality Salience × Charity × Gen-der) ANOVA that yielded no significant effects with regard to gender(all Fs < 1.78). Therefore, gender will not be discussed further.

5. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing thisissue to our attention.

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Received June 27, 2001Revision accepted January 14, 2002


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