TY - JOUR
T1 - Creativity and terror management
T2 - Evidence that creative activity increases guilt and social projection following mortality salience
AU - Arndt, Jamie
AU - Greenberg, Jeff
AU - Pyszczynski, Tom
AU - Solomon, Sheldon
AU - Schimel, Jeff
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2007 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1999/7
Y1 - 1999/7
N2 - 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) × 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.
AB - 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) × 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.
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U2 - 10.1037/0022-3514.77.1.19
DO - 10.1037/0022-3514.77.1.19
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0033407775
VL - 77
SP - 19
EP - 32
JO - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
SN - 0022-3514
IS - 1
ER -