Mildly depressed people respond to death reminders with amplified nationalism
Evidence
Given their tenuous faith in the meaningfulness of life and in their own self-worth, we suspected that depressed people would be especially vulnerable to death reminders. Although it would be unethical to induce severely depressed people to think about their mortality, we conducted some studies with mildly depressed individuals. While depressed Americans are generally less demonstrative in their support of America than their compatriots, we found that after a death reminder, mildly depressed people became even more nationalistic than their fellow citizens. And after being jolted into defending their culture by a reminder of their mortality, the mildly depressed people reported that life was more meaningful. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 733
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the terror management research on worldview defense in the earlier chapters; mildly depressed people exaggerate the same defensive response found in the general population.
Related
- Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats (similarity 0.84)
- Subtle death reminders drive worldview defense, self-esteem striving, and unhealthy behavior. (similarity 0.82)
- Threatening cherished beliefs brings thoughts of death closer to awareness (similarity 0.81)
- Worldview and self-esteem defense is bidirectional with death-thought accessibility. (similarity 0.81)
- Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem (similarity 0.80)
- Conscious death thoughts require delay to trigger worldview defenses (similarity 0.80)
- Death reminders uniquely trigger worldview and relationship defense, unlike other aversive threats. (similarity 0.79)
- Adults respond to death reminders with mundane distraction and consumption (similarity 0.79)
- High self-esteem and optimism enable constructive responses to death threats. (similarity 0.78)