Cultural Worldviews, Cultural Artistic Products, and Contemporary Popular Music

Research on Terror Management Theory has shown that reminding individuals of their mortality leads them to intensify support for their culture, to decrease support for foreign cultures, or both. The present study extends this basic finding by examining a novel operationalization of cultural worldview defense, namely support for cultural artistic products in the form of contemporary popular music. The present study also examined the moderation of this effect by authoritarianism. Participants were randomly assigned to a mortality salience (MS) or a control condition and then evaluated excerpts from four songs: two each from their own and a foreign culture. Consistent with hypotheses, MS impacted the relative evaluation of the local vs. foreign music for individuals high in authoritarianism. Discussion focuses on mortality salience effects as a function of authoritarianism and artistic preferences as affirmation of cultural values.