Sufism and terror management: A comparison between sufis, other religious individuals, and atheists in relation to their reactions to mortality salience

Terror management theory (TMT) claims that people's awareness of their mortality leads to a unique sense of terror and that fear of death is the most basic motivation that drives human behavior. According to the theory, people apply to various psychological structures to manage this emotion. In the theory, it is suggested that one of the most important structures that manage the anxiety caused by the mortality salience is the religiosity. The main purpose of this study was to test the main claims of the TMT through an alternative religious lifestyle to the understanding of individual religiosity by focusing on the piety of Sufism specific to the Islamic religion. For this purpose, data were collected from a total of 181 participants, 60 of whom were religious, 60 of whom were atheists and 61 of whom were sufis. Through the reading of different texts, half of the participants in each group were subjected to "mortality salience" manipulation and the other half to "dental pain salience" manipulation. According to the findings, the mortality salience led to an increase in the level of death thought accessibility and worldview defence in the religious group consistent with the basic assumption of the TMT, while in atheist and sufi groups it led to results that were inconsistent with the basic assumption of the TMT. Remembering their mortality has increased the death thought accessibility among both atheists and sufis. However, as a result of mortality salience, while the level of worldview defence remained unchanged in the atheist group, it decreased in the sufi group. In addition, it was observed that all three groups of participants were more sensitive to religious/atheist worldviews and responded more negatively to criticism of their religious/atheist worldviews. The main argument of this study is that, contrary to what the TMT claims, remembering death may not always lead to a sense of terror and will not produce negative consequences in all human groups. The fact that the mortality salience among sufis did not lead to a worldview defence supports this argument. Key Words: Terror management, religiosity, sufism, fear of death, mortality salience, sufi, atheist