Burke, B. L., Martens, A. & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155–195.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
The quantitative summary of terror management theory, on which a self that seeks continuity beyond death through a worldview and a group is the standard account of legacy striving. Its replicability is contested, which a reading should check. For QUESTION-301.
Read in its place
The work cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand.
Many Labs 4 (NOTE-1322) takes one figure from Burke et al.: 79.8% of the mortality-salience studies it covered used the writing-about-one’s-death induction. It cites the meta-analysis as a source on TMT and intergroup conflict, and then tests the field’s prototypical paradigm directly, finding g = 0.07 against the original d = 1.34. Missing still: Burke et al.’s pooled effect, number of studies, moderator analyses (delay, type of control, type of defense) and any test for publication bias. Chen et al. 2025 supplies the first two (r = .35 over 277 studies) and re-runs the analysis with bias corrections.
Chen et al. (NOTE-1271) give Burke et al.’s design and headline: a random-effects meta-analysis of 277 mortality-salience studies, with no bias correction, finding an average r = .35, and a later re-analysis (Yen and Cheng 2013) attributing much variance to experimenter effects. They adopt its search and selection rules, reproduce its uncorrected result on 635 effects (r = .37), and show that bias corrections roughly halve it (r = .18) or remove it. Missing still: Burke et al.’s own moderator analyses (delay, type of control condition, type of defense, sample), its breakdown by paradigm and its 95% intervals. Many Labs 4 adds only that 79.8% of the studies used the writing-about-death induction.