Texting & Tombstones: The Impact of Mortality Salience on Risky Driving Intentions

     Objective: This study investigated the impact of mortality salience (MS) on the intentions of young adults to drive a motor vehicle while texting or using a cell phone. Methods: Three hundred eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions.  Participants in the MS condition were shown a color photograph of a gravesite and tombstone on which the participant’s full name and cause of death (texting while driving) were inscribed.  Participants in the quasi-MS condition viewed a color photograph of a grave site and tombstone on which the participant’s family name and cause of death (texting while driving) were inscribed. Participants in the two remaining non-MS conditions viewed color photographs depicting health related scenes that were unrelated to death.  The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) questionnaire was employed as the distractor task following the MS manipulation.  Results: Mortality salience manipulations decreased behavioral intentions to drive while using a cell phone (DWCP) when a participant’s own mortality was highlighted and when a participant’s family’s mortality were depicted (β = -.128, p = .037 and  β = -.187, p = .002, respectively).  In addition, mortality salience manipulations increased negative attitudes toward DWCP when mortality salience messages depicted one’s own mortality and one’s family’s mortality (β = .176, p = .005 and β = .176, p = .005, respectively).  The impact of mortality salience manipulations on DWCP attitudes and intentions were not moderated by the extent to which a participant’s self-image was associated with cell phone use. Conclusion:  The results challenge frequent claims that MS manipulations inevitably increase intentions to engage in risk taking behavior.  Indeed the current findings suggest that MS manipulations may be important in the design of public health interventions that are intended to prevent and reduce ‘texting while driving’ and related health threatening behaviors.  Notably, our findings are based on a new and, arguably, more vivid method of inducing mortality salience than employed in most previous studies, adding to the rigor of the experimental design and the validity of the findings.   

Key words: mortality salience, risk perception, driving, texting, cell phone,