1999/07/01 by Jamie Arndt, Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon +2 · 2 citations
Psychology · #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health #Optimism, Hope, and Well-being
paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.1.19
openalex publication_date 1999/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
The present research, based on the ideas of O. Rank (1932/1989) and E. Becker (1973), was designed to test the hypotheses that engaging in creative expression after personal mortality has been made salient will lead to both increased feelings of guilt and a desire to enhance social connectedness. In Study 1, the authors used a 2 (mortality salience vs. control) X 2 (creative pretask vs. noncreative pretask) between-subjects factorial design and measured self-report guilt. Results indicated that participants who were reminded of their death and completed the creative pretask expressed more guilt than all other participants. In Study 2 this effect was replicated with a modification of the creativity treatment. In Study 3, the same conditions leading to increased guilt also led mortality-salient creative-task participants to express higher levels of social projection, an index of perceived social connectedness. Implications of these results for creativity, the interpersonal nature of guilt, and terror management theory are briefly discussed.