Facing a Real Threat of Death: Dynamic Changes in Death-Thought Accessibility

PURPOSE: This study explored the relationship between emotion and death-thought accessibility (DTA) in individuals experiencing true mortality salience (MS), specifically, patients with cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study included 255 participants; among them, 132 patients had cancer and represented the MS group, and 123 had dental pain and served as a control group. Participants completed the Projective Diseases Attitude Assessment Questionnaire to induce priming, completed an affect scale, completed one of four calculation tasks as manipulation of cognitive load (all four were done over several sessions), and performed a Pinyin-Chinese characters exercise to measure DTA. RESULTS: MS was associated with strong negative emotional arousal. When these negative emotions are generated, they enter an individual’s consciousness and activate proximal defense mechanisms. At this point, DTA can be measured. Patients with cancer had significantly higher levels of DTA in the high-frequency cognitive load condition than in the other three conditions (no task, simple delay task, and single cognitive load task). Patients with dental pain had significantly higher levels of DTA in the no task and simple delay conditions than in the single cognitive load or high-frequency cognitive load conditions. This study also found that negative experiences without MS (specifically, dental pain) are associated with higher levels of DTA. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that in addition to death-related events, both negative and stress-inducing events can produce DTA.