Profound Versus Superficial Coping With Mortality Threats: Action Orientation Moderates Implicit but Not Explicit Outgroup Prejudice.

Mortality salience (MS) strengthens cultural values but individuals might differ in whether this process operates at a superficial, explicit level only or also at a profound, implicit level. Two studies investigated whether explicit and implicit attitudes toward Muslims after an MS induction vary as a function of threat-related action orientation (AOT), an efficient form of self-regulation of emotion and behavior that draws on the activation of the implicit, integrated self. In Study 1, there was a main effect of MS on explicit prejudice but only participants with high levels of AOT showed reduced implicit prejudice following MS.

Recovering from negative events by boosting implicit positive affect.

Upregulation of implicit positive affect (PA) can act as a mechanism to deal with negative affect. Two studies tracked temporal changes in positive and negative affect (NA) assessed by self-report and the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin, Kazen, & Kuhl, 2009). Study 1 observed the predicted increases in implicit PA after exposure to a threat-related film clip, which correlated positively with the speed of recognising a happy face among an angry crowd.