Date of Award

5-2026

Degree Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

School

Psychology

Committee Chair

Stephanie Smith, Ph.D.

Committee Chair School

Psychology

Committee Member 2

Donald Sacco, Ph.D.

Committee Member 2 School

Psychology

Committee Member 3

Nora Charles, Ph.D.

Abstract

Griskevicius and colleagues (2011b) demonstrated decision-making patterns consistent with life history theory, called life history strategies, using an experimental design in which they randomly assigned college students to read one of two texts. The experimental condition was designed to trigger a feeling of heightened awareness of one’s own mortality, called mortality salience. Participants in this condition exhibited patterns of risk-taking and delay discounting on the outcome measures that were related to their childhood socioeconomic status (SES), one of the first demonstrations of life history strategies in an experimental setting.

However, multiple attempts at replication have failed to show similar results. Thus, the current study aimed to replicate the results of Griskevicius et al. (2011b), to test if the results could be strengthened with the addition of updated measures, and to explore the potential mediating role of attitudes towards the future. Results indicated that the replication was not successful, as the mortality salience prime did not elicit different response patterns and there were no evident relationships between decision-making patterns and childhood experiences. The ineffectiveness of the mortality salience prime contributes to a wider discussion on the nature of the effects of mortality salience primes, as well as failures to replicate studies that use priming methodology. This failure to replicate the results of Griskevicius et al. (2011b) is consistent with prior attempts at replication, and a re-examination of this influential study is warranted.

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