Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Graham, Steven

Keywords

Anxiety, Terror-Management, Defense Mechanism

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Anxiety management theories of self-esteem suggest that human behavior is influenced by the need to reduce anxiety-inducing cognitions. Two such theories, Terror Management Theory and Uncertainty Management Theory, attribute anxiety to the fear of death and the fear of uncertainty, respectively. This thesis critically compared these two theories, hypothesizing that mortality salience ultimately functions as a subset of uncertainty. Conditions were designed to compare death priming and uncertainty priming while addressing a persistent temporal ambiguity confound previously exhibited in anxiety threat management research. Sixty participants were primed with these counterbalanced stimuli before having their worldviews challenged/affirmed. Results failed to disprove the hypothesis, as there were no significant differences between worldview defense scores between groups. Implications and limitations of this research are discussed.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

Download

Share

COinS