Research has suggested that the sense of threat aroused by reminders of death can lead to worldview defense and elevated conservatism. The current studies disentangled the effects of mortality salience and death anxiety on two core components of conservatism—resistance to change and acceptance of inequality—and on the broader worldviews of normativism and humanism. Study 1 (N = 186), which used a mortality salience manipulation, and Study 2 (N = 354), which measured self-reported death anxiety, suggested that existential threat was associated particularly with resistance to change and normativism, consistent with theoretical expectations, in samples of Swedish adults. The results indicated that conservative shift had occurred predominantly among left-wingers. However, Study 3, which was a pre-registered online replication of Study 1 with respondents from the United Kingdom, yielded no evidence for any effects of mortality salience on ideology (N = 319) or worldview (N = 199). An internal pre-registered meta-analysis of mortality salience effects indicated that mortality salience had a marginally significant effect only on normativism. Taken together, the results provided little clear evidence of mortality salience effects on ideological preferences and worldviews, but dispositional death anxiety was associated with resistance to change, normativism, and acceptance of inequality particularly among leftists.
Multinational states: Constitutional challenges: The case of Scotland