An Extended Replication of Death Thought Suppression in a Turkish Sample
Asil Ali Özdoğru and Şevval Osmanoğlu
Asil Ali Özdoğru and Şevval Osmanoğlu
According to terror management theory, individuals experience cognitive discomfort when they think about the inevitability of death. When mortality becomes salient, individuals suppress thoughts of death through cultural beliefs and values that give them meaning in life and a sense of personal value or self-esteem. In some studies with death primes, individuals were found to have higher accessibility of death thoughts after a delay in the task due to cessation of suppression. In their study in 2012, Trafimow and Hughes found that death thought accessibility was higher in no delay condition than the delay condition. As part of an international registered replication, this study aimed to replicate that finding in a Turkish sample with additional variables. A group of 106 Turkish university students (90% female, mean age 24.3) responded to an online questionnaire. Experimental group was asked to think and write about their own death (n = 50), while the control group was asked about dental pain (n = 56). In the delay condition, half of all participants (n = 49) read an unrelated brief news article. After the stimuli, participants were given either a word generation or completion tasks including death related words. Additionally, participants completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and the Sense of Humor Scale (SHQ-6-R). Results. We found that the experimental group generated significantly more death-related words than the control group. In both experimental and control groups, there was no significant difference between the two delay conditions or the two word task groups in the amount of death-related words. Number of death-related words were not significantly associated with the RSES or SHQ-6-R scores. Our findings did not replicate the findings of the original study. Theoretical and methodological implications were discussed.
Citation: Özdoğru, A. A., & Osmanoğlu, Ş. (2022, July 5-8). An extended replication of death thought suppression in a Turkish sample [Conference presentation]. 17th European Congress of Psychology, Ljubljana, Slovenia. https://www.ecp2022.eu
Media: Üsküdar Üniversitesi Psikoloji Bölümü Çalışmalarıyla Avrupa Psikoloji Kongresinde! (2022, Temmuz 7). Üsküdar Haber Ajansı. https://uskudar.edu.tr/tr/icerik/8143/uskudar-universitesi-psikoloji-bolumu-calismalariyla-avrupa-psikoloji-kongresinde
No comments:
Post a Comment