Saving Can Save from Death Anxiety: Mortality Salience and Financial Decision-Making

Citation: Zaleskiewicz T, Gasiorowska A, Kesebir P ( Saving Can Save from Death Anxiety: Mortality Salience and Financial Decision-Making Tomasz Zaleskiewicz 0 Agata Gasiorowska 0 Pelin Kesebir 0 Frank Krueger, George Mason University/Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, United States of America 0 1 Faculty in Wroclaw, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland, 2 University of Colorado at Colorado Springs , Colorado Springs, Colorado , United States of America Four studies tested the idea that saving money can buffer death anxiety and constitute a more effective buffer than spending money. Saving can relieve future-related anxiety and provide people with a sense of control over their fate, thereby rendering death thoughts less threatening. Study 1 found that participants primed with both saving and spending reported lower death fear than controls. Saving primes, however, were associated with significantly lower death fear than spending primes. Study 2 demonstrated that mortality primes increase the attractiveness of more frugal behaviors in saveor-spend dilemmas. Studies 3 and 4 found, in two different cultures (Polish and American), that the activation of death thoughts prompts people to allocate money to saving as opposed to spending. Overall, these studies provided evidence that saving protects from existential anxiety, and probably more so than spending. - People save and spend money for a variety of reasons, which would map on to Maslows hierarchy of human needs, with survival at a low level and symbolic self-expression at a high level [1]. Sometimes saving and spending serve instrumental purposes. Money spent on necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, or healthcare enhances the quantity and quality of ones life. Saving money can serve the same utilitarian functions, by allowing people to meet these needs at a future time and potentially in emergencies. The uses of money are not restricted to rational, instrumental ends, however. As demonstrated repeatedly by consumer psychologists, money and consumption fulfill important symbolic needs and peoples economic decisions are oftentimes driven by psychosocial concerns (e.g., status) rather than tangible, instrumental utility concerns [2,3,4,5]. One example is consumption as a sexual signaling system: Men have been shown to spend money on conspicuous luxuries as a way to convey their desirability to potential mates [6,7]. On the other hand, rejecting conspicuous consumption or overspending can also be driven by symbolic reasons, such as a desire for spirituality [8]. The main goal of the present paper is to show that saving behavior can similarly serve symbolic psychological functions. Previous research inspired by terror management theory [9] has consistently documented that money and consumption can buffer death anxiety [10,11]. The intended contribution of the current paper is to demonstrate that not only spending but also saving money can function as an existential buffer and protect people from death anxiety. In the next part of the paper, we present terror management theory, review the existing literature on how conspicuous consumption helps people to cope with fear of death, and introduce the underlying rationale for our claim that saving can buffer death anxiety. Following that, we describe four experiments that reveal saving as a buffer against existential terror, possibly one that is more effective than spending. Terror Management Theory Humans, unlike other animals, are sophisticated enough in their mental abilities to be aware of the fragility of life and the inevitability of ultimate death. Terror management theory (TMT; for recent overviews, see [9,12]) proposes that this awareness of mortality has the potential to generate paralyzing anxiety and that the management of this potential anxiety is essential for effective functioning. According to the theory, people develop an anxiety buffering system that, as long as it is functional, protects against existential anxiety and provides psychological equanimity. The key ingredients of this anxiety buffer are a sense of meaning, security, value, relatedness, and transcendence. These ingredients are typically found in cultural worldviews, self-esteem, and close personal relationships. Because these psychosocial entities can buffer against death anxiety, people are highly motivated to seek and maintain them and defend them against threats [13,14]. Since the inception of TMT about 25 years ago, a large body of research has supported hypotheses generated by the theory (see [15] for a review). Accordingly, when thoughts of mortality are activated, people become more invested in their cultural worldview, self-esteem, and close relationships. For example, reminders of mortality increase hostility toward those who threaten ones cultural worldview [16,17,18], the desire to boost ones self-esteem [19], the identification with the ingroup [20], and commitment to ones romantic partner [21]. Conversely, when ones cultural worldview, self-esteem or close personal relationships are threatened, anxiety increases and death-related thoughts become more salient in the consciousness [22]. Boosting selfesteem or validating ones worldview, on the other hand, decreases anxiety and pushes death-related thoughts further from consciousness [23,24]. Taken together, the TMT literature reveals that death anxiety plays an important role in various life domains (e.g., religion and spirituality, politics, sex, health behavior) and that it is a fundamental motivational force for the human psyche. Consumption and the Fear of Death Conspicuous consumption and materialism are two common features of contemporary Western culture. People accumulate material possessions in vast excess to what they need to survive, and sometimes even center their lives around the accumulation of wealth, neglecting other values potentially more conducive to happiness [5,25,26,27]. Scholars have long tried to understand the psychological functions served by materialist behavior, and one of the explanations offered has been that people use wealth as a way to secure meaning and transcend death [28,29,30,31]. Recent empirical research has lent support to the notion that money, wealth, and possessions can buffer existential anxiety. Reminders of mortality have been shown to increase the desire for conspicuous consumption and materialism (for overviews, see [32,33]). In one study, for example, participants induced to think about their mortality reported higher financial expectations for themselves in the future, and expected to spend more money on pleasurable consumption such as clothing, entertainment, and leisure activities [34]. These participants also became greedier and less environmentally sensitive in a forest management game. Other research found that mortality thoughts increase the desire for high-status luxury products like Lexus automobiles and Rolex watches [10]. Relatedly, Rindf (...truncated)