1. Exploring the Effects of Mortality
Salience and Personal Need for
Structure on Attitudes Toward the
LGBT Community
Katie E. Field
North Dakota State University

2. Personal Perpetuation and Experiences of LGBT
Discrimination on Campus
 30% of participants admitted to treating someone
differently on campus based sexual orientation or
gender identity.
 50% of participants admitted to witnessing someone
being treated differently on campus based on their
sexual orientation or gender identity.
 50% of participants who did not self-identify as
exclusively heterosexual said they had been treated
differently on campus based on their sexual orientation

3. Why?

4. Terror Management Theory
 Death awareness (Becker, 1973).
 Humans are a unique species aware of their eventual and
inevitable death – this awareness causes anxiety
 Cope with anxiety (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991).
 Cultural worldviews are shared belief and meaning
systems that people invest themselves in to manage
anxiety
 Worldview defense (Resenblatt et al., 1989; Greenberg et al., 1990; Pyszczynski et al., 2003).
 Evaluations of individuals with beliefs different from a
particular worldview tend to be more negative

5. But what about differences
in the perceptions of
individuals?

6. Personal Need for Structure
 Motivated to organize the world of information
(Neuberg & Newsom, 1993).
 Cognitive Perspective & Individual Differences
(Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; Arndt, Cook, & Routledge, 2004; Juhl & Routledge, 2010).
 High Need for Structure  Dislike ambiguity, avoid
uncertainty, see the world in black and white
 Low Need for Structure  Cognitively flexible, embrace
uncertainty, see the world on a grey scale
 Supporting Research
 PNS & Homosexuality (Smith & Gordon, 1998).
 Higher PNS  More negative attitudes toward gay individuals
 PNS & Erroneous Stereotypes (Hamilton, Stroessner, & Driscoll, 1994).
 PNS & Spontaneous Inferences (Moskowitz, 1993).

7. Terror Management & Need for Structure
 Individual Differences (Dechesne et al., 2000; Landau et al., 2004).
 Higher PNS: Less accepting of new ideas and cultures
following awareness of inevitable death (mortality salience)
 Lower PNS: More accepting of new ideas and cultures
following MS
 Supporting Research
 Mortality salience and religion (Juhl & Routledge, 2010).
 High in PNS  Increased dogmatic worldview defense
 Mortality salience and university-related issues (Juhl & Routledge, 2010).
 Terrorism and nationalism (Routledge et al., 2010).

8. Current Study
 Based on previous findings, we believed that
for those high in personal structure, making
mortality salient would result in more negative
attitudes toward the LGBT community

9. Method
 148 undergraduate students from NDSU
 90 females
 Mage= 19.11, SD = 2.44
 Completed a number of filler
questionnaires
 Personal Need for Structure (Thompson et al., 2001).
 12 items on 6-point Likert scale
 “I become uncomfortable when the rules in a
situation are not clear.”
 M = 3.69, SD = 0.53, α = 0.75

10. Method cont.
 Manipulation
 Control Condition: Ask participants to think about pain, and
how it feels to go through pain
 Mortality Salience Condition: Ask participants to think
about their own death, and how it will feel to physically die
 Discomfort with LGBT Presence on Campus
(Field, Roylance & Routledge, 2014.)
 4-items on 5-point Likert scale
 “It would make me uncomfortable if I found out my
professor was gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.”
 M = 2.45 , SD = 0.93 , α = 0.74

11. Results
 No main effect of MS on discomfort with
LGBT Presence on Campus
 Main effect of PNS on discomfort with
LGBT Presence on Campus (p = .02)
 Significant interaction of MS and PNS on
discomfort with LGBT Presence on
Campus

12. Results cont.
 Mortality Salience x Personal Need for Structure
 B = -0.69, SE = 0.28, p = 0.02
0
1
2
3
Low PNS High PNS
DiscomfortwithLGBT
Presence
Control
MS
(-1 SD) +1 SD
p = .07
Less Discomfort
More Discomfort
p = .09 p < .001

13. Discussion
 LGBT discrimination is still prevalent on NDSU’s
campus
 Existential concerns and how people cope with such
concerns have important implications for attitudes
toward the LGBT community
 As LGBT issues become more relevant and less
unfamiliar in today’s culture, those high in PNS
should feel less threatened
 Future research should examine other marginalized
populations

14. Acknowledgements
 I’d like to thank everyone who was involved in
making this study possible
 Dr. Clay Routledge, Ph.D.
 Dr. Jacob Juhl, Ph.D.
 Christina Roylance, M.S.
 Andrew Abeyta, M.A.
 Dr. Kara Gravley-Stack, Ph.D.
 Lindsey Boes, M.A.
 Without their support and knowledge, this study
would not have succeeded.