TMT and mindfulness

Meditation may regulate emotional and normative responses to existential threat, yet its effects on distal defenses remain underexplored. Grounded in Terror Management Theory (TMT), this study examined whether a brief mindfulness-based task modulates predisposition to moral transgression and state anxiety under mortality salience. A total of 231 university participants from Spain and Portugal completed baseline measures of trait mindfulness, fear of death, and state anxiety. Participants were randomly assigned within country to a 2 (mortality salience: present vs. absent) × 2 (task: meditation vs. neutral) between-subjects design. Mortality salience was induced using a standard death-thought manipulation; the experimental task involved a 20-minute guided meditation, and the control task consisted of Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Predisposition to moral transgression was assessed through moral dilemmas administered pre- and post-manipulation. Results showed no main effects but significant interactions for both outcomes. Under mortality salience, meditation reduced moral transgression and state anxiety relative to the neutral task. Dispositional variables showed minimal moderating influence. Findings suggest brief meditation regulates distal normative defenses in existential contexts.