Social-coalitional trait is related to coping capacity with mortality threat: association with leadership and a reduced parietal response to mortality salience

Kanan Hirano; Kentaro Oba; Toshiki Saito; Ryuta Kawashima; Motoaki Sugiura

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1188878

Social-coalitional trait is related to coping capacity with mortality threat: association with leadership and a reduced parietal response to mortality salience

Front Behav Neurosci. 2023 Jul 13:17:1188878. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1188878. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Kanan Hirano^#^{1

2}, Kentaro Oba¹, Toshiki Saito^{3

4}, Ryuta Kawashima¹, Motoaki Sugiura^#^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
² International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
³ Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
⁴ Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: Coping with mortality threat, a psychological threat unique to humans and distinct from general emotional distress, is traditionally characterized by immediate suppression and prolonged worldview defense within the framework of the influential terror management theory (TMT). Views regarding the personality-trait concepts for this coping capacity diverge: some favor a broad definition based on general psychological attitudes (e.g., hardiness), while others prefer a narrow definition linked to interpersonal attitudes related to social coalition (e.g., attachment style and self-transcendence).

Methods: Using functional MRI, we presented healthy older participants with death-related words and explored correlations between the neural responses to mortality threat and the factor scores of the Power to Live questionnaire, which measures eight resilience-related psychobehavioral traits.

Results: We observed a significant association between the factor score and a neural response only for leadership; individuals with a high leadership score exhibited reduced neural response to mortality salience in the right inferior parietal lobule.

Discussion: Within the TMT framework, our findings align with the concept of the immediate suppression of death-thought accessibility associated with a secure attachment style, a trait conceptually linked to leadership. These findings highlight the unique role for the narrowly defined social-coalitional trait during the immediate stage of the coping process with mortality salience, in contrast to the broadly defined resilience-related personality traits associated with a prolonged worldview defense process. The deterioration of this coping process could constitute a distinct aspect of psychopathology, separate from dysfunction in general emotion regulation.

Keywords: attachment style; death threat; disaster; fMRI; leadership; mortality salience; parietal cortex; terror management.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by KAKENHI (22H04855) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a Subsidy for Interdisciplinary Study and Research Concerning COVID-19 from the Mitsubishi Foundation.