Testing and comparing three different mortality salience manipulations

According to Terror Management Theory, awareness of being mortal is a serious anxiety trigger. Facing the inevitability of death is regarded as one of the important factors which clarify underlying reasons for human motivation. This theory has existed in social psychology literature for over 30 years and has been worked by many researchers from different countries around the world. The recent replication attempts which failed to replicate original findings created a replication crisis which makes an overwhelming impression that damages trust, especially in the social psychology world. Some results from terror management literature could not be replicated by large-scale research teams. This study was planned to focus on one of the methodological factors which may be related to failed replication attempts, which is the manipulation method. This thesis aimed at testing three different manipulation methods that were used in previous terror management research to test whether they would work and comparing these methods to if one of these methods works better than others (N = 534). The results showed that when asked directly about death, all manipulation methods worked, but when asked indirectly, no manipulation method worked. There were no substantial differences across three manipulations in terms of their effectiveness. Possible reasons for these findings, limitations of the current study, and suggestions for future studies were discussed.