failed_experiment.db
← Back to browse

Psychology› Social Psychology› Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion

Social psychology — Mortality salience (terror management theory)

Submitted 2026-10-22

Field: Psychology › Social PsychologyType: Couldn't replicate a published resultArea: social psychologyTarget: Mortality salience (terror management theory)Stage: replication

Hypothesis

Reminding people of death would increase national patriotism, as the traditional mortality-salience effect predicts, and would also shift democratic values, ingroup identification and pro-sociality.

What failed

Neither a lab experiment (N = 101, Norway) nor a larger online experiment (N = 784, US) replicated the mortality-salience effect on national patriotism. Conceptual replications on democratic values, processing speed, psychophysiological responses, ingroup identification and pro-sociality were not supported either.

Broken assumption

Death reminders reliably increase defence of one's worldview, such as national patriotism.

Why

The authors conclude only that the effect of death reminders is less robust and generalizable than assumed, noting that transparent, high-powered replications had been lacking despite several hundred original studies.

From the published paper: Sætrevik et al. Meta-Psychology, 2022. ↗CC BY

Research ideas from this failure

Unvetted lead — read the papers

New hypotheses this failure suggests, each with a crucial experiment, a rival explanation of the original result, and the papers it rests on. Written by AI from paper titles and abstracts found on OpenAlex (and Europe PMC, for life and health sciences).

Related failures (4)

Matched on shared genes, mechanisms and ways of failing as well as wording. Each shows why it matched — treat these as leads rather than verdicts.

Links in published research

Where this experiment's genes are known to matter outside its own research area, and the papers behind those links. Sources: Open Targets Platform and Europe PMC.