Prosocial Attitudes toward Money from Terror Management Perspective: Death Transcendence through Spirituality

Based on Terror Management Theory (TMT), we suggest that spirituality and prosocial attitudes toward money have a similar defensive function in resisting existential anxiety. In mortality salient (MS) situations, both spirituality and prosocial money attitudes afford symbolic immortality by self-tra...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Dong, Mengchen (Author) ; Jin, Shenghua (Author) ; Prooijen, Jan-Willem van 1975- (Author) ; Wu, Song (Author) ; Zhang, Yanjun (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2019
In: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Year: 2019, Volume: 29, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-17
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Money / Terror management theory / Social action / Spirituality / Mortality / Consciousness
IxTheo Classification:AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
AE Psychology of religion
NCC Social ethics
ZB Sociology
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Description
Summary:Based on Terror Management Theory (TMT), we suggest that spirituality and prosocial attitudes toward money have a similar defensive function in resisting existential anxiety. In mortality salient (MS) situations, both spirituality and prosocial money attitudes afford symbolic immortality by self-transcendent connections. In four studies, we found that activating death awareness weakened people's subjective love of money (Study 1) and predicted increased spending willingness on prosocial rather than proself goals (Studies 2, 3, and 4). More importantly, MS effects on money attitudes were smaller when people's trait spirituality was high (vs. low; Studies 1, 2, 3) and when people were primed to experience spirituality (vs. happiness control condition; Study 4). For low spirituality people, the association between MS and prosocial spending also depended on the capacity of money spending to contribute positively to one's feelings of self-worth (Study 3). Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.
Item Description:Die Aufsätze in gedruckter Form von 29.2019,1-4 sind in einem Zeitschriftenheft zusammengefasst
ISSN:1532-7582
Contains:Enthalten in: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2018.1532267