The Effect Of Death On The Psychology Of Forgiveness

Terror management theory proposed mortality salience can change the behavior motivation of individual. People will use a variety of defense mechanisms to defend against anxiety of death. Previous studies have proved that death will highlight individual harsher penalties offensive actions of others and reduce the level of forgiveness. But most studies have focused on the criminal acts of strangers, and no offensive conduct research on other relationships. Closeness relationship as an important defense mechanism of death, may be combined mortality salience effect the individual forgiveness level. Therefore, the present study want to explore how mortality salience and different closeness relationship types effect forgiveness level and psychological mechanisms. We recruited the college students as participants. The research can be separated into three studies. Study1 explore the mortality salience effects on explicit forgiveness level. Study 2 explore the mortality salience effects on implicit forgiveness level. Study 3, a manipulation to boost implicit forgiveness level was conducted to investigate the effects on terror management theory. And it examined the influence of increase of implicit close r forgiveness level on death-thought accessibility(DTA) after mortality salience. The results revealed that when the offender is lovers, mortality salience increased explicit forgiveness level and weaken implicit forgiveness level. When the offender is friend, mortality salience both increased explicit and implicit forgiveness level. When the offender is parents, explicit forgiveness was not significantly different, implicit forgiveness level has been increased. when the offender is stranger, mortality salience weaken explicit forgiveness level and increased implicit forgiveness level. Boost implicit forgiveness level after mortality salience can reduce the DTA of subjects. Findings were discussed in light of terror management theory, relationship theory, evolutionary psychology and implicit and explicit cognition.