EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MORALITY, MORTALITY AND GROUP MEMBERSHIP

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between mortality salience, group membership and moral judgement. Given that mortality salience has been found to independently affect ones’ moral judgement (Bassett & Sonntag, 2010; Yilmaz & Bahçekapili, 2018) and the desire for group membership (Wisman & Koole, 2003), this paper seeks to investigate if group membership can mediate the relationship between mortality salience and moral judgement. The construct of longevity is also explored, and its effects compared with mortality. This study was conducted on 167 University students in Singapore, aged 18 to 25, who were tasked to rate the acceptability of and come up with transgression justifications for twelve vignettes, nine of which belonged to the moral domain. Results show that participants did not differ in their overall moral judgements, but that mortality or longevity salience influenced the types of justifications that they made. These findings suggest that mortality or longevity salience affects ones’ moral judgement in terms of the types of justifications that are produced but not the overall direction of their moral judgement.