The effect of mortality salience on weapon bias

The research tested the hypothesis that those in life-threatening situations may accidentally fire upon an individual whose ethnicity differs from their own, because mortality salience (MS) increases negative bias toward outgroup members ( Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986). In the experiment, 88 White participants completed the weapon bias task (Payne, 2001). Participants viewed pictures and judged whether the picture was a hand tool or weapon. Each picture is briefly preceded by either a White or Black face. Prior to the starting the task, participants either wrote a short essay describing the emotions that the thought of their own death arouses in them (i.e., MS condition) or their feelings toward an upcoming exam (i.e., control condition). The results showed that individuals in the MS condition made more errors on the task. Further, the increase in error rates was significantly larger for conditions in which Black versus White faces preceded hand tools.

► Research has shown that reminding individuals of their mortality increases intergroup bias.
► Mortality reminders caused an increase in errors on a weapon bias task in the present research.
► Participants were most likely to misidentify a tool as a gun if they had been reminded of mortality.
► This was especially true if the image of the tool was preceded by the image of a Black individual.