Citation

Naidu PA, Hine TJ, Glendon AI. Death Stud. 2022; 46(7): 1706-1715.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/07481187.2020.1846228

PMID

33186065

Abstract

The efficacy of different implicit death anxiety measures was examined. In Study 1 (N = 133), the death-word-fragment task (DWFT), commonly used to test death-thought accessibility in terror management theory (TMT) research, did not differentiate between mortality salience (MS) and control conditions. Instead, death-related word completions were associated with word dimensions other than MS induction. Study 2 (N = 155) tested three implicit measures (lexical-decision task, dot-probe task, ambiguous pictures task), which differentiated between conditions, revealing greater sensitivity than the DWFT. As TMT research widens its scope, investigating measures to capture implicit death concerns is important.

Language: en