Self-esteem

To date, there is a large body of studies support the function of self-esteem defend against death anxiety. Conventional studies on the role of self-esteem act as an anxiety buffer to the mortality salience rely on the self-report questionnaire as the measurement tool (Burke et al., 2010). The construct measure by self-report questionnaire is mainly derived from the concept of explicit self-esteem. It is common for the research of TMT using explicit self-esteem indicates the concept of self-esteem and hence to explain their role on mortality salience (Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 1992).Explicit self-esteem is measured in a conscious way. It is a reliable measure for the construct but we should not ignore the role of unconscious and introspective measurement of self-esteem. However, there is still concern about the social desirability effect on the self-report measurement. Previous research examined that participants had a tendency to have self-deception and impressive management on the measurement (Paulhus, 1998).

It is not necessary to hold the view that self-reflections only process in conscious level. There are evidence revealed that many social cognitive functions operates in a unconscious evaluation (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Implicit measures of personality have proven useful since the beginning of personality psychology (Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000). Scholars have argued that certain self-reflections may similarly operate at unconscious levels. It is assumed that non-conscious self-reflections are inaccessible to rational and conscious and have to observe in an indirect and implicit way (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). The automatic self-reflection is termed as implicit self-esteem. Implicit self-esteem is defined as an aut...

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... the other hand, there are several researches to construct self-esteem as other source of self-esteem or other self-related concept on TMT. For example, self-esteem is defined as a self-body image and body esteem (Goldenberg, McCoy, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000; Goldenberg & Shackelford, 2005); self-enhancement (Arndt & Goldernberg, 2011) and fitness intentions (Arndt, Schimel, & Goldenberg, 2003).Therefore, it is justified enough to predict that people with high implicit self-esteem can reduce death anxiety by imposing defensive response to the mortality salience. In the theoretical point of view, full understanding of self-esteem in the TMT requires taking into consideration components of self-esteem other than the explicit level. These include implicit self-esteem and hence both implicit and explicit self-esteem will be examined in the current study.