Terror Management in a Multicultural Society: Effects of Mortality Salience on Attitudes to Multiculturalism Are Moderated by National Identification and Self-Esteem Among Native Dutch People.

Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg et al., 1997) proposes that mortality concerns may lead people to reject other cultures than their own. Although highly relevant to multiculturalism, TMT has been rarely tested in a European multicultural society. To fill this void, two studies examined the effects of mortality salience (MS) among native Dutch people with varying levels of national identification and self-esteem. Consistent with TMT, MS led to less favorable attitudes about Muslims and multiculturalism among participants with high (rather than low) national identification and low (rather than high) self-esteem (Study 1). Likewise, MS led participants with high national identification and low self-esteem to increase their support of Sinterklaas, a traditional Dutch festivity with purported racist elements (Study 2). Together, these findings indicate that existential concerns may fuel resistance against multiculturalism, especially among people with low self-esteem who strongly identify with their nationality.

Data on simulated interpersonal touch, individual differences and the error-related negativity.

The dataset includes data from the electroencephalogram study reported in our paper: 'Effects of simulated interpersonal touch and trait intrinsic motivation on the error-related negativity' (doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2016.01.044) (Tjew-A-Sin et al., 2016) [1]. The data was collected at the psychology laboratories at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2012 among a Dutch-speaking student sample. The dataset consists of the measures described in the paper, as well as additional (exploratory) measures including the Five-Factor Personality Inventory, the Connectedness to Nature Scale, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale and a scale measuring life stress. The data can be used for replication purposes, meta-analyses, and exploratory analyses, as well as cross-cultural comparisons of touch and/or ERN effects. The authors also welcome collaborative research based on re-analyses of the data. The data described is available at a data repository called the DANS archive: http://persistent-identifier.nl/?identifier=urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-tzbk-gg.

Effects of simulated interpersonal touch and trait intrinsic motivation on the error-related negativity.

The error-related negativity (ERN or Ne) is a negative event-related brain potential that peaks about 20-100 ms after people perform an incorrect response in choice reaction time tasks. Prior research has shown that the ERN may be enhanced by situational and dispositional factors that promote intrinsic motivation. Building on and extending this work the authors hypothesized that simulated interpersonal touch may increase task engagement and thereby increase ERN amplitude. To test this notion, 20 participants performed a Go/No-Go task while holding a teddy bear or a same-sized cardboard box. As expected, the ERN was significantly larger when participants held a teddy bear rather than a cardboard box. This effect was most pronounced for people high (rather than low) in trait intrinsic motivation, who may depend more on intrinsically motivating task cues to maintain task engagement. These findings highlight the potential benefits of simulated interpersonal touch in stimulating attention to errors, especially among people who are intrinsically motivated.

Embodied terror management: interpersonal touch alleviates existential concerns among individuals with low self-esteem.

Individuals with low (rather than high) self-esteem often struggle with existential concerns. In the present research, we examined whether these existential concerns may be alleviated by seemingly trivial experiences of both real and simulated interpersonal touch. A brief touch on the shoulder by a female experimenter led individuals with low self-esteem to experience less death anxiety (Study 1) and more social connectedness after a death reminder (Study 2). Reminding individuals with low self-esteem of death increased their desire for touch, as indicated by higher value estimates of a teddy bear, a toy animal that simulates interpersonal touch (Study 3). Finally, holding a teddy bear (vs. a cardboard box) led individuals with low self-esteem to respond to a death reminder with less defensive ethnocentrism (Study 4). Individuals with high self-esteem were unaffected by touch (Studies 1-4). These findings highlight the existential significance of embodied touch experiences, particularly for individuals with low self-esteem.