Testing the Death Thought Suppression and Rebound Hypothesis: Death Thought Accessibility Following Mortality Salience Decreases During a Delay

It is an important hypothesis of terror management theory that death thoughts are suppressed immediately following a mortality salience treatment but that, after a short delay during which suppression ceases, death thoughts become more accessible. Although there is much indirect empirical support for this idea, there are few direct tests. Our goal was to test this hypothesis with simple experiments. Thus, after mortality was made salient, death thought accessibility was measured immediately or after a delay. The results contradicted the prediction that death thought accessibility should be higher in the delay condition than in the no delay condition. Keywords terror management theory, suppression, rebound, concept accessibility According to terror management theory (TMT), humans are in a unique position because they are the only animals that are aware of their own mortality. The pairing of an instinctive desire for continued life coupled with the awareness of the inevitability of death creates the potential for paralyzing terro