Abstract
According to Terror Management Theory (TMT), there are three common buffers that minimize the anxiety of mortality salience: affirmation of a) one’s cultural worldview, b) the self and one’s personal values, and c) one’s significance in the context of close personal relationships. The current study aimed at examining the contents of memes, which were distributed on social media during the COVID-19 outbreak, to explore the means by which humor buffers against death anxiety. A deductive and inductive thematic analysis captured three means by which humor buffers against death anxiety, a) humor as a means for connecting to cultural worldviews; b) humor as a means for inclusion in group; c) humor as a means to gain a sense of control. These findings are discussed through the theoretical lens of TMT.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0273338 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 8 August |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 Mahat-Shamir, Kagan. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.