This study examined how traumatic stress affects the ability of self-affirmation to manage thoughts about death when reminded of mortality. Participants were divided into low and high traumatic stress groups. For those with low trauma, reminding them of death increased death-related thoughts only if they did not do a self-affirmation task, showing self-affirmation is effective. However, for highly traumatized individuals, reminding them of death increased these thoughts regardless of self-affirmation. This suggests traumatic stress disrupts the normal anxiety buffer of cultural worldviews, rendering self-affirmation ineffective at managing death thoughts.

1. THE EFFECTS OF TRAUMATIC SYMPTOMOLOGY, MORTALITY SALIENCE, AND SELF-
AFFIRMATION ON THE EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF DEATH-THOUGHT ACCESSIBILITY
Adrienne R. Morgan; Kenneth E. Vail III, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology, Cleveland State University
According to terror management theory (TMT), healthy human functioning involves the effective management of the
awareness ofmortality by perceiving oneselfas an object of value within an ordered and seemingly permanent cultural
world. Indeed, prior research has shown that when non-traumatized individuals are reminded of mortality they
subsequently displayed increased accessibility of death-related cognitions, unless they engaged in a self-affirmation
task (affirming their self-worth and cultural values). Traumatic experiences, however, represent a strong threat to that
perception, undermining one’s value and the security provided by one’s cultural worldview. Thus, anxiety -buffer
disruption theory (ABDT) has recently been developed to help explain posttraumatic stress disorderas stemming from
a disruption of normal anxiety-buffer functioning. The current research aimed to assess if self-affirmation proved to
be ineffectual in bolstering death-thought accessibility (DTA) in highly traumatized individuals when reminded of
mortality (due to disruption of their cultural anxiety-buffer). A 2 (group: low vs high traumatic-stress) x 2 (mortality
salience [MS] vs. pain salience) x 2 (self-affirmation vs. control topic) ANOVA revealed a main effect of MS such
that DTA was higher in the MS condition than in the pain condition, replicating prior research. The ANOVA also
revealed the predicted 3-way interaction. Among those with low levels of traumatic stress,MS increased DTA in the
control topic condition but not in the self-affirmation condition, replicating prior work and indicating the presence of
effective anxiety buffering among the low-trauma sample. However, among those with high levels of traumatic stress,
MS increased DTA in the control topic condition and in the self-affirmation condition, revealing that the otherwise
effective anxiety buffer (one’s cultural worldview) was disrupted and ineffective among the high-trauma sample.
Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.