Apocalypse now: Thoughts about human extinction under mortality salience increase death-thought accessibility but reduce worldview defense

Various threats (e.g., climate change, nuclear wars, pandemics) pose the risk of human extinction. This represents a threat to human cultures and should result in effects similar to mortality salience (MS). At the same time, thoughts about human extinction reduce the belief in a long-lasting culture. This conflicts with the striving for symbolic immortality as a strategy to buffer MS. To investigate how thoughts about human extinction affect terror management, participants were presented with either an apocalyptic, destructive, or neutral video in combination with a manipulation of MS. Participants reported highest death-thought accessibility when watching the apocalyptic video under MS. However, worldview defense was decreased after watching the apocalyptic video under MS. These findings point to a dissociation between proximal and distal defense mechanisms: Thoughts about human extinction increase proximal defenses under MS, but they undermine the strive for symbolic immortality by worldview defense as distal defenses.