Mortality Salience, System Justification, and Candidate Evaluations in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

Experiments conducted during the 2004 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections suggested that mortality salience primes increased support for President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, respectively. Some interpreted these results as reflecting "conservative shift" following exposure to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-03, Vol.11 (3), p.e0150556-e0150556
Main Authors: Sterling, Joanna, Jost, John T, Shrout, Patrick E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Attitudes
Biology and Life Sciences
Conservatism
Disaster Planning
Election results
Elections
Experiments
Exposure
Female
Health aspects
History, 21st Century
Humans
Influence
Leadership
Male
Mortality
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Politics
Presidential elections
Psychology
Salience
Senators
Social aspects
Social Sciences
Studies
Terrorism
Threats
United States
Young Adult
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Summary:Experiments conducted during the 2004 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections suggested that mortality salience primes increased support for President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, respectively. Some interpreted these results as reflecting "conservative shift" following exposure to threat, whereas others emphasized preferences for "charismatic" leadership following exposure to death primes. To assess both hypotheses in the context of a new election cycle featuring a liberal incumbent who was considered to be charismatic, we conducted four experiments shortly before the 2012 election involving President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Contrary to earlier studies, there was little evidence that mortality salience, either by itself or in interaction with political orientation, affected overall candidate ratings or voting intentions. However, a significant interaction between mortality salience and system justification in some studies indicated a more circumscribed effect. The failure to "replicate" previous results in the context of this election may be attributable to disagreement among participants as to which of the candidates better represented the societal status quo.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0150556