Temporal Perspective and Prosocial Behavior Under Mortality Salience: Evidence from Chinese University Students

The findings reconcile previous inconsistencies by demonstrating temporal perspective's critical moderating role. Linear temporal perspective strengthens MS effects through enhanced existential threat awareness, while cyclical temporal perspective helps individuals avoid the awareness of mortality's inevitability via natural cycle conceptualizations. This suggests temporal cognition interventions could modulate prosocial outcomes in death-related contexts, with implications for terror management applications in social behavior modification.