Crisis Conformity as Affiliation Defense under Mortality Salience: A TMT Perspective

Kexin Lu¹Yang Gao²Yichen Ni³Hong Li^4*

• ¹Mental Health Education and Counseling Center of Tongji University, Shanghai, China
• ²School of Public Management, Northwest University, Xi'an, China
• ³Department of Senior High School, Shenzhen Foreign Language School, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
• ⁴Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

Background: In crisis situations, individuals seem exhibit elevated conformity—manifested in crowding, stampedes, and hoarding—yet the mechanisms driving this behavior remain underexplored. As Terror Management Theory suggests, behaviors intensifying after mortality salience serve as existential defenses. Drawing on TMT, this study posits that crisis-induced conformity arises as a defense against death anxiety. Coupled with evidence that conformity fulfills the fundamental need for affiliation, this research hypothesizes that conformity specifically functions as an affiliation defense through which individuals mitigate death-related anxiety in life-threatening contexts.Method: Four experiments were conducted to test the proposed three hypotheses. Study 1a used scenario-based priming (crisis vs. daily situations) and self-report measures to test the elevated affiliation needs and conformity as affiliation defenses at two levels based on mortality salience hypothesis. Study 1b used the improved TMT paradigm, replacing neutral controls with economic crisis manipulations to isolate existential threats from nonspecific emotional arousal. Study 2 elucidate the relationship between affiliation needs and conformity propensities in crisis contexts through investigating how experimental manipulation of affiliation influence conformity. Study 3 used a 2 (situation: crisis/control) × 2 (conformity/nonconformity) design to investigate the anxiety-buffering function of conformity.Results: Both Study 1a and 1b showed that crisis situations significantly increased both affiliation needs and conformity tendency. Study 2 revealed that the presence of dyadic companions during crisis significantly attenuates individuals' affiliation needs toward crowds, while conformity propensities also significantly diminish. Study 3 found that crisis conformity reduced negative affects and increased positive emotions compared to non-conformity, while no such effects emerged in daily contexts. Conclusion: These findings uncover crisis conformity’s psychological mechanism under the framework of TMT: crises increase affiliation needs and conformity (Study 1a & 1b), consistent with the mortality salience hypothesis. The presence of evacuation companions in mortality-salient crisis significantly attenuates affiliative needs toward crowds and correspondingly reduces conformity propensities (Study 2). Conformity as affiliation defense mitigates negative affect and mortality anxiety while enhancing positive affect, thereby buffering psychological distress (Study 3).This study extends TMT to the field of crisis conformity research and provides a new perspective for interpreting the intrinsic motivation of crisis conformity.