| Abstract:
The Terror Management (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) and Emotional-Processing Mind (Longs, 2004) theo- ories suggest that the threat of death is the most fundamental and important source of adaptive and maladaptive psychological structures like high and low self-esteem. The present research examined the effect of Mortality Salience (MS; Rosenblatt et al. , 1989) on self-esteem. A sample of 91 female and 128 male students of TehranUniversity were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. The experimental group answered the two questions about MS topic and the control group answered the two questions about Non Mortality Salience topic (Pyszczynski et al. , 1999). Then both groups filled out Rosenberg's Self-Esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965). Findings revealed that the self-esteem of experimental group was significantly higher than control group (P=0.03). Results are discussed based on the role of death in the psychological structure of the individual.
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