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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 29, No. 9, 1181-1189 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167203254599

Connecting Terror Management and Dissonance Theory: Evidence that Mortality Salience Increases the Preference for Supporting Information after Decisions

Eva Jonas

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, jonas{at}psy.uni-muenchen.de

Jeff Greenberg

University of Arizona

Dieter Frey

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

From the perspective of terror management theory, reminders of mortality should intensify the desire to pursue cognitive consistency. The authors investigated this notion with regard to dissonance theory starting from the finding of research on "selective exposure to information" that after having made a decision, people prefer consonant over dissonant information. The authors found that following mortality salience, people indeed showed an increased preference for information that supported their decision compared to information conflicting with it. However, this only occurred with regard to a worldview-relevant decision case. For a fictitious decision scenario, mortality salience did not affect information seeking. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Key Words: terror management theory • dissonance theory • information search after decisions • cultural worldview


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