The impact of death awareness on sizes of self-representational objects

People seem to have a tendency to increase the relative size of self-representational objects. Prior research suggests that motivational factors may fuel that tendency, so the present research built from terror management theory to examine whether existential motivations – engendered by concerns about death – may have similar implications for self-relevant size biases. Specifically, across two studies (total N = 288), we hypothesized that reminders of death would lead participants to inflate the size of self-representational objects. Both studies suggested that relative to reminders of pain, mortality salience led participants to construct larger clay sculptures of themselves (vs. others; Study 1) and a larger ostensible video game avatar for the self (vs. others; Study 2).