Mortality Salience in the News of Immigrant Perpetrators: Effects on Viewers’ Emotion, Story Evaluation, and Perceived Crime Susceptibility

Po-Lin Pan*, Shuhua Zhou, Marceline Hayes

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

Abstract

This study approaches the interplay between terror management and social identity theories to examine the individual and joint effects of mortality salience (MS) and social group difference (SGD). A 2 (MS: present/absent) × 2 (SGD: immigrant/nonimmigrant perpetrator) within-subjects repeated measures experiment was designed to study news viewers’ negative emotion, story evaluation, and crime susceptibility. Results revealed that MS promoted higher negative emotion and better story evaluation but decreased crime susceptibility. TV news of immigrant perpetrators activated higher negative emotion and higher crime susceptibility, but not story evaluation. In addition, the joint effects of MS and SGD were significantly found on viewers’ emotion, story evaluation, and crime susceptibility. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)464-478
JournalHoward Journal of Communications
Volume30
Issue number5
Online published24 Dec 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes

Research Keywords

  • crime susceptibility
  • emotion
  • mortality salience
  • story evaluation
  • terror management theory

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