The numbing effect of mortality salience in consumer settings

Abstract

Nationwide Insurance and Johnnie Walker Scotch aired advertisements that encouraged people to contemplate death. What are the immediate emotional and perceptual outcomes of such advertisements? With five studies, thinking about death was found to attenuate emotional reactions and perceptions, a novel finding in the literature. This attenuation was observed with neural and self-report measures along with retrospective and prospective assessments of emotion and is an outcome not yet investigated in mortality salience research. Contemplating death dampened people's expectations of emotion in a future consumption experience and diminished the attractiveness of the experience. Similarly, contemplating death affected backward-looking assessments of emotion, for example, when nostalgic memories are brought to mind. Importantly, this dampening effect of mortality salience was replicated with advertisements that portrayed death-related concepts and attenuated emotional reactions to subsequent advertisements.