Premium
Existential function of babies: Babies as a buffer of death‐related anxiety
Author(s) -
Zhou Xinyue,
Lei Qijia,
Marley Scott C.,
Chen Jinsong
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-839x.2008.01268.x
Subject(s) - death anxiety , psychology , terror management theory , existentialism , pessimism , anxiety , immortality , developmental psychology , function (biology) , fear of death , social psychology , clinical psychology , psychoanalysis , psychiatry , epistemology , philosophy , art , literature , evolutionary biology , biology
The present study examined babies as death anxiety buffers with Chinese participants in three experiments. In Experiment 1, death‐related thoughts increased college‐aged participants' interest in human babies. In Experiment 2, images of newborn animals reduced the number of death‐related thoughts recorded by college‐aged participants. In Experiment 3, female factory workers who read news articles describing deaths of babies had pessimistic estimations of their own life expectancies. An explanation of these results is provided within a terror management theory framework, with a primary focus on how babies reinforce cultural worldviews and enhance self‐esteem via the notion of symbolic immortality. Thus, the anxiety‐buffering function of baby is subsumed under cultural worldviews validation and self‐esteem enhancement.