Saving Can Save from Death Anxiety: Mortality Salience and Financial Decision-Making

Four studies tested the idea that saving money can buffer death anxiety and constitute a more effective buffer than spending money. Saving can relieve future-related anxiety and provide people with a sense of control over their fate, thereby rendering death thoughts less threatening. Study 1 found that participants primed with both saving and spending reported lower death fear than controls. Saving primes, however, were associated with significantly lower death fear than spending primes. Study 2 demonstrated that mortality primes increase the attractiveness of more frugal behaviors in save-or-spend dilemmas. Studies 3 and 4 found, in two different cultures (Polish and American), that the activation of death thoughts prompts people to allocate money to saving as opposed to spending. Overall, these studies provided evidence that saving protects from existential anxiety, and probably more so than spending.