Mortality Salience Shifts Moral Judgment: Reproductive Motivations Override Normative Defenses in Males

Abstract

The interplay between mortality awareness and human motivation is central to both psychological and evolutionary theory. While Terror Management Theory (TMT) posits that mortality salience (MS) prompts increased adherence to cultural worldviews, serving primarily survival-related functions, modern evolutionary frameworks emphasize reproductive success as the ultimate adaptive priority. This study experimentally examined how MS influences moral judgments when survival-and reproduction-oriented motivations are in direct conflict. In a between-subjects design (N = 160), participants were randomly assigned to MS or control conditions and evaluated two morally transgressive scenarios: one conferring reproductive advantage and the other not. Among men, MS significantly decreased moral condemnation and increased justification for reproduction-related norm violations, whereas it heightened condemnation and reduced justification for violations lacking reproductive benefit. No significant effects were observed among women. These findings align with Life History Theory and Parental Investment Theory, suggesting that mortality threat elicits a sex-specific shift in motivational priorities, with men adopting faster, reproduction-oriented strategies. This study is the first to experimentally contrast survival and reproductive motives in this way, revealing that reproductive imperatives may, in some contexts, supersede cultural norm adherence. The present findings support an integrative, adaptationist account in which MS effects are best understood not as the product of a single existential anxiety mechanism, but as context-and sex-contingent recalibrations of motivational priorities with clear evolutionary logic.