Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2000, Vol. 79, No. 6, 923-932 Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/00/55.00 DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.79.6.923 Derogation and Distancing as Terror Management Strategies: The Moderating Role of Need for Closure and Permeability of Group Boundaries Mark Dechesne, Jacques Janssen, and Ad van Knippenberg University of Nijmegen Previous research has revealed that when individuals are confronted with criticism of a personally relevant group, mortality salience can lead to either derogation of the source of criticism or distancing from the group. In this article, the authors investigated closure as a potential moderator of these reactions. In Study 1, mortality salience led to greater derogation of a critic of a relevant group among high-need- for-closure participants but led to distancing from the group among low need-for-closure participants. Study 2 showed that when a relevant group was criticized, mortality salience led to greater derogation among participants who were led to believe that the boundaries of that group were impermeable but led to greater distancing among participants who were made aware of the permeable nature of the group boundaries. These findings demonstrate that closure of group membership moderates reactions to criticism of a personally relevant group after mortality salience. Social groups and the values they convey enable individuals to alleviate existential concerns by providing self-esteem resources and by satisfying epistemic needs (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszc- zynski, 1997). Yet, given its arbitrary genesis and symbolic nature, the sense of identity derived from group membership is also fragile and thus requires continual maintenance and defense against threat (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1966). When faced with existential concerns and criticism of a personally relevant group, the individ- ual must therefore determine whether group membership is worth defending and should thus be used to reduce existential concerns or if it should be abandoned to prevent the criticism from damag- ing one's beliefs and self-image. A considerable body of research has demonstrated that reminding people of the transitory nature of existence causes them to defend personally relevant groups against threat (see Greenberg et al., 1997, for a review). Recently, how- ever, it has also been found that reminders of death can lead to distancing from particular groups. Particularly in circumstances under which group membership reflects negatively on the self, reminders of death have been found to lead to distancing from the group (e.g., Dechesne, Greenberg, Arndt, & Schimel, in press; Arndt, Greenberg, Schimel, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1999). Apparently, then, mortality salience can evoke two identity management strategies: defense of one's group and distancing from groups that reflect negatively on the self. Given the duplicity of reactions after mortality salience, it becomes important to spec- Mark Dechesne, Jacques Janssen, and Ad van Knippenberg, Department of Social Psychology, University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. We wish to thank Sander Koole and Michael Schreiber for their com- ments on previous versions of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mark Dechesne, Department of Social Psychology, Section of Cultural Psychol- ogy and Psychology of Religion, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Electronic mail may be sent to dechesne@psych.kun.nl. ify the conditions under which one strategy is preferred over the other. In the following article, we suggest that reminders of mor- tality force the individual to decide whether a criticized group is worthy of defense or whether it should instead be abandoned. Furthermore, we suggest that this decision is largely determined by the value attached to maintaining a social identity and the expec- tation of the possibility of abandoning a social identity. If such value is high or such expectancy is low, we expect that reminders of mortality will lead to greater defense of the identity. If, on the other hand, such value is low or the expectancy is high, we expect that reminders of mortality lead to distancing from the group. We present two studies that were designed to assess the empirical merits of this analysis. In both studies, we render the concepts of value and expectancy into constructs that have previously received attention in the literature on identity maintenance. In Study 1, we focused on the concept of need for closure (e.g. Kruglanski & Webster, 1996) to assess the potential moderating role of value attached to identity maintenance in the reaction to identity threats after mortality salience. In Study 2, we focused on the concept of permeability of group boundaries (Tajfel, 1978) to investigate whether contextually induced expectancies influence the prefer- ence for either one of the two terror management strategies. Terror Management Theory The impact of existential concerns on social phenomena has been investigated extensively within the framework of terror man- agement theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Greenberg et al., 1997). The theory starts with the observation that self-awareness constitutes a mixed blessing of human self- regulation wherein survival counts as a superordinate goal. On the positive side, self-awareness enables us to adapt to changing circumstances and anticipate future dangers. On the negative side, however, it also enables humans to foresee the inevitability of the end of life and therefore harbors the potential to undermine all goal-related activities. According to terror management theory, the 923 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.