Delay and Death-Thought Accessibility: A Meta-Analysis

The dual-process component of terror management theory (tmt) proposes that different types of threats lead to increases in death-thought accessibility (dta) after different delay intervals. experimental studies of terror management threats’ effect on dta were collected and coded for their use of explicitly death-related (vs. not explicitly death-related) threats,and for their use of delay and task-switching during the delay. results reveal that studies using death-related threats achieved larger dta effect-sizes when they included more task-switching or a longer delay between the threat and the dta measurement. in contrast,studies using threats that were not explicitly death-related achieved smaller dta effect-sizes when they included more task-switching between the threat and the dta measurement. these findings provide partial support for the dual-process component’s predictions regarding delay and dta. limitations and future directions are discussed. © 2015,2015 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.