European Journal of Social Psychology

Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)

Published online 5 June 2007 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.442

Self-sacrifice as self-defence: Mortality salience increases

efforts to affirm a symbolic immortal self at the expense
of the physical self

CLAY ROUTLEDGE1* AND JAMIE ARNDT2

1
Department of Psychology, University of
Southampton, UK
2
Department of Psychological Sciences, University
of Missouri-Columbia, USA

Abstract

The increasing occurrence of suicide bombing attacks highlights a question that has received little
direct empirical attention in social psychology. Why are people willing to sacrifice their lives to
advance an ideological agenda? The current research suggests that willingness to self-sacrifice reflects
efforts to manage death awareness by investing in a symbolic identity that provides some form of
immortality. If willingness to self-sacrifice is a response to death awareness then increasing the
salience of death thoughts should lead to an increase in willingness to self-sacrifice for a death-
transcending symbolic identity (e.g. one’s nation). Further, if self-sacrifice after mortality salience
(MS) is a striving for symbolic immortality then having participants imagine an alternative way to
transcend death should moderate this effect. Support for these hypotheses was found as MS increased
willingness of British participants to self-sacrifice for England, but only when an alternative route to
symbolic immortality was not provided. Implications are briefly discussed. Copyright # 2007 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

*Correspondence to: Dr Clay Routledge, Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
E-mail: C.D.Routledge@soton.ac.uk

Received 4 October 2006

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 3 April 2007
532 Clay Routledge and Jamie Arndt

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
—From Wilfred Owen’s (1921) Dulce et Decorum est

In 1917, the English poet Wilfred Owen wrote a scathing condemnation of propagandists who
encouraged young men to volunteer to fight in the First World War. The words in the poem’s title,
‘Dulce et Decorum est’, translated to English mean ‘it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country’.
Such words reflect the enduring belief that to self-sacrifice for one’s nation is of great symbolic value.
In recent years, the actions of extreme militant Islamic groups have highlighted a different form of
self-sacrifice that is more ideologically than nationally driven—suicide terrorism. Though
volunteering for the military and participating in a terrorist attack are very different behaviours,
the underlying sentiment concerning the value of an honourable death is quite similar. The willingness
to die for a national or religious cause has been prevalent throughout history and is independent of
nation and religion (Dolnik, 2003). It is thus surprising that extant research has not more directly tried
to answer the question: why are people willing to put their own lives at risk to represent or protect an
ideological agenda or national cause? Although the answer to this question is undoubtedly complex,
terror management theory (TMT; e.g. Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991) may provide some
insight. TMT asserts that awareness of the inevitability of their physical demise motivates people to
invest in cultural worldviews that provide a symbolic sense of self that transcends mortality. Though
previous research has investigated people’s efforts to defend cultural worldviews and live up to
associated standards of value in response to reminders of death, to date, no research has explicitly tested
whether willingness to self-sacrifice may be a function, in part, of strivings to secure a sense of
symbolic immortality. The current research examines this proposition.

TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY AND RESEARCH

One major psychological hurdle for human beings is how to cope with the awareness of the inevitability
of death (Becker, 1973). Life is a struggle for survival and humans, more so than any other animal,
realise that no matter how much food is secured or how many predators are avoided or defeated, the end
result is the same. According to TMT (e.g. Solomon et al., 1991), people turn to cultural belief systems
or worldviews to mitigate the potentially aversive psychological impact of death awareness. Cultural
worldviews do so by facilitating symbolic identities in which people can feel as if they are part of
something larger, more meaningful and ultimately, longer lasting than their own physical lives. While
religious worldviews afford a sense of literal immortality with their promise of an afterlife, both
religious and secular worldviews offer a sense of symbolic immortality as they facilitate ways to
construe the self as part of a larger symbolic entity that will transcend physical death. This larger
symbolic entity is often derived from a group or social identity, as the group provides necessary social
consensus for the validity of the belief system. Further, when people define the self at a broader group or
cultural level (e.g. a collective self; see Sedikides & Brewer, 2001), they gain a symbolically immortal
sense of self because the group will presumably outlast the individual (see Castano, Yzerbyt, &
Paladino, 2004). For example, soldiers shipping off to war may gain a sense of symbolic immortality by
investing in a worldview espousing the value of democracy and the belief that though they may perish,
what is important is that their democratic nation is protected and will thus continue to thrive. However,
because the existence of alternative worldviews and social groups who endorse them may challenge the

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
 Self-sacrifice as self-defence 533

validity of one’s own worldview, TMT proposes that people are motivated to defend their own
worldview and identifications in the face of such threats.
Cultural worldviews also provide prescriptions for value—for what constitutes good and bad
behaviour—that when fulfilled, promise protection and ultimately death transcendence. If a cultural
worldview promises some form of immortality, then who more deserves this reward than those who
have demonstrated their total belief in and allegiance to the worldview. Thus, TMT asserts that in
addition to defending the worldview, people strive to live up to the standards of the worldview and by
doing so gain the feeling that they are worthy of the security and immortality offered by it.
One of the ways in which these ideas are tested empirically is through the MS paradigm. The
hypothesis is that if cultural worldviews provide protection from the threat of death awareness, then
heightening death awareness (MS) should heighten efforts to defend and live up to the standards of the
cultural worldview. Numerous experiments have found support for this hypothesis. For example,
Christian participants asked to write about their own death, compared to those in a control condition,
showed increased positive reactions to other Christians and more negative reactions to Jewish
individuals (Greenberg et al., 1990). Other studies have found similar MS effects on defence of one’s
opinion on social issues, nation, political party and even favourite sports team (for a review see e.g.,
Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). In addition, studies have similarly shown that MS can
motivate relatively more extreme forms of behaviour, such as physically aggressing against worldview
challengers (McGregor et al., 1998) and reacting more leniently towards a person who committed a
violent hate crime against a worldview challenger (Lieberman, Arndt, Personius, & Cook, 2001).
Further, the effects of reminders of death have been demonstrated with respect to a variety of aversive
control topics (e.g. being paralysed, Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Schimel, 1999;
general anxieties, Greenberg, Simon, Harmon-Jones, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Chatel, 1995; social
exclusion, Schimel et al., 1999; uncertainty, Landau, Johns, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, &
Martens, 2004; taking an exam, McGregor et al., 1998; giving a speech in public, Greenberg,
Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994; death of a loved one, Greenberg et al., 1994; or
experiencing intense physical pain, Goldenberg, Arndt, Hart, & Brown, 2005).
Perhaps one of the most extreme ways for individuals to invest in their worldview is, ironically, to
sacrifice their own lives for it. If people realise that physical existence is temporary and one function of
a cultural worldview is to provide some form of death transcendence, then people may be willing to
take physical risks and even die in order to secure their immortality.

SELF-SACRIFICE AS SELF-DEFENCE

Human history is full of examples of self-sacrifice in the name of a religious, nationalistic or

ideological cause. Christianity, of course, was borne from an act of martyrdom, and the earliest
examples of Islamic self-sacrifice in the form of assassin cults occurred in the 11th century. In World
War II, nationalistic self-sacrifice was dramatically illustrated by nearly 5000 Japanese kamikaze pilots
who purposefully flew their planes into American military targets in the name of national honour and
duty (Laquer, 1990). Over the last three decades, self-sacrifice via suicide bombing has emerged in
places such as Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Israel and more recently, the United States, England and Iraq. These
are just some examples of more extreme violent cases of self-sacrifice and do not include instances of
self-sacrifice such as volunteering to serve in the military during times of war, fasting in protest of a
government policy, or putting oneself in harms way in service of a religious or political agenda (e.g.
missionaries who relocate to politically unstable countries to spread Christianity).

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
534 Clay Routledge and Jamie Arndt

Though TMT implies that willingness to self-sacrifice for an ideological or nationalistic cause
reflects efforts to transcend mortality by investing in a worldview that provides some sense of
immortality, there has surprisingly been little empirical research directly addressing this issue.
Certainly, as reviewed earlier, a variety of studies are consistent with the enhancement of group
identification after MS. Castano and colleagues (Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002; Castano,
2004) have found, for example, that reminders of death intensify sensitivity to, and entativity
perceptions of, enduring social identifications that they argue provide a means to transcend one’s
individual death. The extent to which such reactions serve a symbolic immortality function, however,
has not been examined empirically.
A few studies have broached the interface between managing existential fear and immortality.
Dechesne et al. (2003) found that psychological defences in response to MS reflect efforts to transcend
death by showing that providing participants with reasons to believe in life after death decreases
worldview and self-esteem related defences after MS. Of course, immortality can be obtained not just
literally but also symbolically. Lifton (1983) theorised that people have a fundamental need to derive a
sense of symbolic immortality. Lifton argued that there are different modes through which an
individual can derive a sense of symbolic immortality (e.g. a creative mode, a biological mode) and
suggested that investment in activities, groups or identities that transcend physical death provides
protection from concerns about mortality. Building from Lifton’s (1983) seminal analysis, Florian and
Mikulincer (1998) demonstrated, for example, that those who score high on a dispositional measure of
symbolic immortality are less prone to MS-induced worldview defence. Though these findings
highlight the link between a motive for death transcendence and worldview defence, they do not
address the subject of self-sacrifice. TMT inspired research in the domains of risk-taking and
health-related behaviour does partially address this issue in studies indicating that in response to MS,
people strive to live up to cultural standards of value, even if such efforts are physically dangerous. For
example, Taubman Ben-Ari et al. (1999) elucidated how reminders of death increase risky driving
behaviour among those who value driving as a source of self-esteem, and Routledge, Arndt, and
Goldenberg (2004) found that for women who derived self-worth from being attractive, MS increases
efforts to live up to cultural standards of beauty, even if such behaviour is unhealthy (e.g. sun-tanning).
Similar effects have been found in numerous other cultural domains of self-worth (see Pyszczynksi,
Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004 for a general review, and Goldenberg & Arndt (2007) for
a review of research specifically focused on MS and health risk behaviour). Though these studies
indicate that people are willing to engage in unhealthy behaviour, they do not directly assess an explicit
willingness to die or make self-sacrifices for a cause or important cultural identity as a terror
management strategy.
Recent research by Pyszczynski et al. (2006) begins to address this particular issue. In their research,
in response to MS, relative to a control condition, Iranian college students indicated increased support
for fellow students who supported martyrdom attacks against the United States and willingness to
consider joining the cause. Though this research provides support for the assertion that MS increases
self-sacrificial intentions, there are at least three limitations when considering these findings. First, the
sample consisted of Iranian students and thus introduces the possibility that such findings are
cultural-specific (a second study in Pyszczynski et al. did find that American students were more likely
to support violent military action against Iraq, but this finding is also a bit removed from self-sacrifice).
Second, the measure of willingness to self-sacrifice was a single item and is potentially ambiguous
(‘rate the degree to which you would consider joining their cause’). Joining the cause could mean
different things to different people and does not necessarily mean willingness to self-sacrifice, though it
is implied. Third, and perhaps most important, the domain targeted in the study was religious.
This introduces the possibility that the Pyszczynski et al. findings are limited to literal immortality
strivings (i.e. it is sometimes asserted in Islam that martyrdom ensures passage for the martyr and her or

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
 Self-sacrifice as self-defence 535

his family to the afterlife) and do not extend to secular identities. This becomes a critical issue in
understanding the scope of these effects. In the current study we therefore examine this question with
these issues in mind by: (1) using a different cultural sample (British students); (2) targeting a
non-religious cultural identity that would provide symbolic not literal immortality and (3) using items
that directly assess willingness to self-sacrifice.
In addition, it is important to note that the Pyszczynski et al. (2006) studies do not directly implicate
motives for symbolic immortality in self-sacrificial intentions after reminders of death. To convincingly
demonstrate the link between a motive for immortality and willingness to self-sacrifice, it is important
to show that providing participants with an alternate route to symbolic immortality eliminates the
MS-induced increase in self-sacrificial intentions. If people respond to MS by seeking to affirm a sense
of symbolic immortality, and an increased willingness to make sacrifices for an ideological cause is
believed to reflect such immortality seeking, then making salient an alternative (non-self-sacrificing)
way to affirm a sense of symbolic immortality may reduce their willingness to self-sacrifice.

THE CURRENT STUDY

In the current study, we explore the notion that peoples’ willingness to put at risk and even sacrifice
their physical self reflects efforts to protect a symbolic immortal self in response to the awareness of
mortality. To examine this issue, we recruited British participants, manipulated the salience of
mortality, manipulated the salience of an alternative route to symbolic immortality, and then measured
willingness to self-sacrifice for England. We hypothesised that when mortality was made salient,
relative to when mortality was not made salient, British participants would demonstrate increased
willingness to self-sacrifice for England unless an alternative outlet to affirm a sense of symbolic
immortality was primed.

METHOD

Participants and Procedure

Students from a large British university participated in a 2(salience: mortality vs. dental
pain)
2(group: transient vs. immortal) between-participants experiment. Only those who self-
identified as being British were retained for data analysis (N ¼ 105 (60 females and 45 males; mean
age ¼ 20)). At the start of the session, participants were informed that the study concerned how
personality relates to attitudes and that they would be completing a new personality measure and
questionnaires related to personal attitudes.

Materials

Mortality Salience Condition

Half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive a MS treatment (Rosenblatt, Greenberg,
Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989) which entailed having participants respond to two open-ended
questions: ‘Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you’ and
‘Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once
you are physically dead’. The dental pain control treatment consisted of parallel questions with respect
to the experience of dental pain.

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
536 Clay Routledge and Jamie Arndt

Delay Task

Based on findings that symbolic defences in response to MS are most pronounced after a delay due to an
initial suppression of death-related thoughts (for a review see Arndt, Cook, & Routledge, 2004),
participants completed a mood scale (PANAS; Watson & Clark, 1992) that served as a delay task
between the salience condition and subsequent conditions.

Group Condition

Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the transient group condition and the other half were
assigned to the immortal group condition. They were instructed to read the following scenario and
respond to all subsequent questions with their most natural response. Participants in the transient group
condition were provided with the following paragraph.
Imagine that you have just joined an organisation. You intend to be a member of this organisation for
the remainder of your life. Though you are new to this organisation, it has existed for sometime but it
will not continue to exist after you are gone. That is, the organisation will cease to exist once the
current members, including you, are gone.

Participants in the immortal group condition were provided with the following paragraph.
Imagine that you have just joined an organisation. You intend to be a member of this organisation for
the remainder of your life. Though you are new to this organisation, it has existed for sometime and
will continue to exist even after you are gone. That is, there will always be a new generation of
members and the organisation with always continue to thrive.

Thus, the only difference between these two conditions is whether or not participants were led to
think about belonging to a group that will transcend one’s death.

Dependent Measure

Participants then completed the dependent measure which consisted of three items designed to assess
willingness to make self-sacrifices for England. Specifically, participants responded to the statements,
‘I would die for England’, ‘It is worth making personal sacrifices to protect the British way of life’ and
‘My personal safety is not as important as the continuation of the British way of life’ on a 7-point scale
(1, totally disagree and 7, totally agree). The three items formed a reliable index (a ¼ .87) and were thus
averaged.

Results

To explore the potential for predicted effects to be moderated by gender, we first conducted a 2(gender:
female vs. male)
2(salience: mortality vs. dental pain)
2(group: transient vs. immortal) analysis of
variance (ANOVA). The only effect that emerged involving gender was a main effect indicating that
males (M ¼ 3.99, SD ¼ 1.61) demonstrated greater willingness to self-sacrifice for England than
females (M ¼ 2.58, SD ¼ 1.13), F(1, 97) ¼ 18.08, p < .001. Although this main effect is potentially
interesting when considering the possibility of gender differences in self-sacrifice, because no

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
 Self-sacrifice as self-defence 537

Table 1. Cell means and statistics for the mortality salience by group membership interaction on willingness to
self-sacrifice for England
F-value p-value
MS/transient MS/immortal DP/transient DP/immortal
(N ¼ 31) (N ¼ 24) (N ¼ 28) (N ¼ 22) (interaction)

Composite DV 4.04 (1.57)a 2.88 (1.47)b 2.75 (1.44)b 2.86 (1.14)b 5.18 .03
Item 1 3.90 (1.99)a 2.54 (1.56)b 2.75 (1.88)b 2.86 (1.52)b 4.45 .04
Item 2 4.55 (1.59)a 3.33 (1.47)b 3.18 (1.59)b 3.32 (1.29)b 4.74 .03
Item 3 3.68 (1.76)a 2.75 (1.62)b 2.32 (1.39)b 2.41 (1.26)b 2.81 .097
Notes: Higher scores reflect greater willingness to self-sacrifice. Item 1, ‘I would die for England’. Item 2, ‘It is worth making
personal sacrifices to protect the British way of life’. Item 3, ‘My personal safety is not as important as the continuation of the
British way of life’. Within rows, means that do not share a subscript differ at p  .05.

interaction effects involving gender approached significance ( ps > .55), gender is not considered in
subsequent analyses.
To test the hypothesis that MS would increase willingness to make self-sacrifices for England unless
an alternative outlet for symbolic immortality is provided, a 2(salience: mortality vs. dental
pain)
2(group: transient vs. immortal) ANOVA was conducted. As predicted, there was a significant
two-way interaction, F(1, 101) ¼ 5.18, p ¼ .03 (see Table 1). Mean comparisons were then conducted
to test the hypothesised pattern. First, as predicted, within the transient group condition (when an
alternative outlet for symbolic immortality was not provided), MS participants indicated greater
self-sacrificial intentions than dental pain participants, F(1, 57) ¼ 10.80, p ¼ .002. However, within the
immortal group condition (when an alternative outlet for symbolic immortality was provided), MS and
dental pain participants did not differ, F(1, 44) ¼ 0.001, p ¼ .98. Looked at differently, within the MS
condition, participants in the transient group indicated greater self-sacrificial intentions than
participants in the immortal group, F(1, 53) ¼ 18.46, p ¼ .007. However, within the dental pain
condition, transient and immortal group participants did not differ significantly, F(1, 48) ¼ 0.09,
p ¼ .76.1
Though previous research suggests that MS effects are not due to negative affect created by the
manipulation (see e.g., Greenberg et al., 1997), we wanted to examine this issue in this study. MS did
not affect negative mood ( p ¼ .88) and controlling for negative mood did not impact the previously
reported significant findings.

DISCUSSION

The current study demonstrated that heightened awareness of mortality increases willingness to make
self-sacrifices for one’s nation. Further, such willingness reflects strivings for symbolic immortality
as self-sacrificial willingness was not increased after mortality was made salient if an alternative way to
symbolically transcend death was imagined. These findings are of both theoretical and applied
significance.
When considering theoretical implications, these findings provide critical evidence for the position
that one’s willingness to make potentially fatal self-sacrifices reflects efforts to attain symbolic
1
Although the reliability of the composite dependent measure was high, we checked to see if the same interaction and pattern of
effects emerged for each item. All three questions did indeed show similar effects (see Table 1).

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 531–541 (2008)
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
538 Clay Routledge and Jamie Arndt

immortality. Previous research demonstrates that the more people feel a sense of symbolic immortality,
the less they fear death (Florian & Mikulincer, 1998), and that reminders of mortality increase such
cultural worldview-related psychological defences as support for martyrdom attacks and willingness to
join the cause amongst Iranian students (Pyszczynski et al., 2006). However, the current study is the
first to directly test the proposition that the salience of death increases willingness to self-sacrifice in the
service of seeking symbolic immortality. If willingness to self-sacrifice was not driven by a desire to
affirm a sense of symbolic immortality, the imagined group condition should have had no impact.
Since willingness to self-sacrifice for England only increased when mortality was salient and an
alternative way to transcend death was not imagined, there is evidence in favour of the notion that
self-sacrifice provides feelings of symbolic immortality when mortality is salient. Thus, these findings
compliment those of Pyszczynski et al. (2006) and support the assertion that self-sacrifice is, in part, a
method of defending against the awareness of death.
Notably, the interaction between MS and group immortality condition is also important because it
helps to rule out an alternative explanation for the MS effect. That is, in the absence of this interaction,
it could be that reminding participants of their mortality simply increases the ease with which
participants can consider potential scenarios involving their death (thus leading to greater endorsement
of dying for country). Such an account, however, would not predict an attenuated effect when
participants imagine belonging to an organisation that will exist beyond participants’ life.
These findings have broader theoretical implications when considering theory and research related
to self-definition and social identity. As discussed earlier, people can define the self at a broader social
or cultural level and doing so offers protection from death as the existence of the group will likely
outlast the life of the individual. Castano et al. (2002) examined this idea by considering the concept of
ingroup entitativity—the extent to which a group is perceived to be a real entity (Campbell, 1958).
Castano and colleagues’ assertion was that if social identifications provide symbolic immortality then
reminders of mortality should increase both tendencies to perceive an ingroup as entitative (i.e. as
existing as a real entity) and level of ingroup identification. Said differently, thinking about the
transience of physical self should motivate people to seek out the sense of symbolic immortality
provided by a social identity or collective self. Their data supported this position. For example, in one
study, after MS, Italian participants demonstrated increased Italian ingroup identification and
perceptions of entitativity. Research derived from social identity theory highlights the different
functions that such identities may serve (Brewer, 1991; Hogg & Abrams, 1993; Rubin & Hewstone,
1998). The findings of Castano et al. (2002) suggest that, in addition to these functions, social
identifications may serve a terror management function by helping provide a collective self that is
essentially an immortal self. The current findings converge with this prior work to suggest that when
reminded of the mortal limits of the individual self, people are willing to sacrifice the individual self in
efforts to defend the collective self. Furthermore, imagining another collective identity that provides
symbolic immortality eliminates this effect.
The current findings are also of particular relevance when considering the growing problem of
terrorism and suicide attacks. Before the attacks of 11 September, worldwide, more than 300 cases of
suicide bombings have been documented (Dolnik, 2003). On 11 September 2001, the largest single
suicide attack in recorded history occurred when hijackers turned airliners into missiles by flying them
into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC and killing thousands of
civilians. In July 2005 a series of orchestrated suicide bombings in London killed 58 people (including
the bombers) and crippled the city’s public transport system. And one need only turn on the nightly
news or open a newspaper to realise that suicide attacks have become commonplace in Iraq since the
U.S. led invasion in 2003. Thus, it is no surprise that there is an increasing urgency in efforts to
understand the social and psychological causes of terrorism and suicide bombing in order to develop
strategies to confront this problem.

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 Self-sacrifice as self-defence 539

The current research may prove useful in a number of ways. First, contrary to what may often be
public perception, the present research suggests that acts of self-sacrifice are not limited to those in the
Middle East, but that the underlying existential dynamics have a cross-cultural applicability that
includes people from what are often considered more ‘civilised’ countries. Second, the present research
suggests both that people self-sacrifice, in part, to affirm a sense of symbolic immortality in the face of
an awareness of mortality and that such self-destructive, and in the case of terrorism, other destructive
behaviour can be reduced if alternative routes to symbolic immortality are perceived to be available.
Future research should examine the conditions that will lead individuals to engage in this kind of
extreme reaction and consider the possibility that willingness to self-sacrifice may be most pronounced
among individuals who see no alternative method to maintain a sense of immortal self. Of course, in
some cases (e.g. the Jihad), the quest for religiously defined immortality is seen as the motivation for
the self-sacrificial action. Thus, future research is needed to examine the potentially divergent
consequences of believing in sources of immortality that do or do not prescribe self-sacrificial
behaviour.
In the current study, as with any study, there are of course limitations. First, participants were made
salient of an imagined group membership. We employed an imagined and fairly generic group identity
as to not confound or complicate the experiment with the use of a real group identity. In our initial
examination of this issue we thought it may be difficult to control for all of the properties that real
groups have and the thoughts and feelings that making salient a real group may provoke. Thus we
thought the cleanest way to test our ideas experimentally was to begin with an imagined group with
which participants would have no history. Conducting the study in this way helped ensure that the only
thing we were manipulating was whether or not the group would transcend one’s mortality. In addition,
experimentally, it may be more difficult to convince participants that a real group they belong to will not
transcend their death than it would be to convince them that it would. For example, it is easier to believe
that one’s nation will live on after one dies than it is to believe that it will not. However, future research
should seek to find ways to explore this issue with the use of real, not imagined groups.
Another limitation is that when studying the psychology of self-sacrifice it is difficult to measure
actual behaviour and thus, this study relied on self-reported willingness to sacrifice. In addition, the
items we utilised did not relate to specific types of self-sacrifice (e.g. suicide bombing, willingness to
volunteer for military combat), and only the first item (‘I would die for England’) directly targets giving
up one’s life for country. Therefore, we are limited in our ability to assert that such willingness maps
onto actual behaviour (cf. Nisbitt & Wilson, 1977). Importantly, though, all three items showed parallel
effects and strong reliability. In addition, the present findings fit well with more qualitative analyses of
self-sacrificial motivation (Dolnik, 2003), and we believe, are striking in their implications. Facing as
we do an escalating concern with self-sacrificial action, it is vital to understand the psychological
foundations underlying such behaviour. The present findings represent an important step in this
direction.

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