Death reminders double the hot sauce people inflict on ideological opponents

Evidence

We found that students who wrote about their next exam didn’t care one way or the other about their partner’s political beliefs. Liberal or conservative, they doled out a modest amount of hot sauce for their partner to consume. Students who wrote about their own mortality were similarly restrained when their partners shared their political views. But students who disagreed with the views of their partner poured out more than twice as much hot sauce (often filling the cup to the brim) after they’d thought about death. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 537

Categorization

• SEED: Could be the centerpiece of a popular piece on how micro-reminders of mortality drive everyday cruelty and outrage.