The Influence Of Death Consciousness On Intertemporal Decision-making: The Moderating Effect Of Social Distance And Death Type

Terror management theory holds that when individuals face death anxiety,in order to alleviate this anxiety,they will produce cultural anxiety buffer and realize self-protection.So when people face death,their thoughts,attitudes and behaviors change.Other researchers are devoted to study the positive effect of death on individual psychology,and combine the mechanism of highlighting the course of life with it.The study of people with near-death experience or major trauma experience provides a lot of support for the positive effects of death consciousness.Individuals will experience positive psychology and growth after experiencing and overcoming extremely challenging life events.Existing studies point to the shortcomings of fear management theory,suggesting that fear of death can change individual decision-making.On the one hand,the theory of positive death argues that people’s understanding of death is not necessarily negative,emphasizing the importance of re-recognizing death,and a sense of renewal after the near-death experience will promote the rapid growth of individuals.On the other hand,constructivism theory believes that emotional intensity also affects people’s perception of psychological distance.When people describe something when they are negative,they feel that these events are at a closer psychological distance.In this way,in cross-temporal decision-making,more inclined to immediate options.There is no previous study to explore the construction from the point of view of death prominence.The influence of doctrine on intertemporal decision-making.The purpose of this study is to study the effects of social distance and type of death on intertemporal decision-making in death consciousness from the perspective of constructivism.There are three experiments in this thesis.In the first experiment,the influence of death consciousness on intertemporal decision-making was discussed by questionnaire method.The social distance between the main character and the investigated person in the experience of death,the type of death as the independent variable,and the result of the intertemporal decision-making task as the dependent variable were statistically analyzed.In experiment 2,the influence of different social distance(self,others)and type of death(acute,chronic)on intertemporal decision-making was investigated by behavioral study.In experiment 3,on the basis of experiment 2,the social distance was extended to three dimensions(self,family /friend,stranger),and the material of life course was applied to all subjects.Compared with the subjective value difference of individual intertemporal decision-making before and after manipulation,the hypothesis of highlighting the life course was verified.The results show that:(1)compared with the death salient group,the construction level of the death salient others is higher,and the delay option is preferred in the intertemporal decision-making task;(2)compared with acute death protruding group,chronic death salience group had higher construction level and more preference for delay option in intertemporal decision-making task;(3)after the life history was highlighted,the difference in subjective value of intertemporal decision-making among the subjects disappeared,and the delay option was preferred in the task.Improving the understanding of life and thinking about death from life as a whole is helpful for people to make better choices in intertemporal decision-making.This study can provide some thinking for life education and life education in China,and provide research basis for studying psychological reconstruction in specific environment(for example,disaster environment).