Meaningful movies can serve as an anxiety buffer against the fear of death, unless death plays a central role in the movie. This invites the question what happens when death is central to a movie storyline. The present research introduces and tests the so-called fear transcendence route, a second terror management route in which meaningful movies about death invite viewers to virtually confront and transcend their fear of death. Two experiments ( N = 206; N = 401) tested three preconditions for fear transcendence, that is, (1) death is salient in real life; (2) death is central to the storyline, and (3) the movie projects a specific meaning to death. We assessed effects on fear transcendence, operationalized as decreased fear of death; decreased death avoidance; increased death acceptance. Especially older viewers became less avoidant and more accepting of death when the preconditions for fear transcendence were met. Meaningful movies about death can thus evoke fear transcendence.

中文翻译：

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当有意义的电影引发恐惧超越：电影中死亡功能的恐怖管理扩展说明

有意义的电影可以作为对抗死亡恐惧的焦虑缓冲剂，除非死亡在电影中扮演核心角色。这就引出了一个问题：当死亡成为电影故事情节的中心时会发生什么。本研究介绍并测试了所谓的恐惧超越路线，这是第二种恐怖管理路线，其中有意义的关于死亡的电影邀请观众虚拟地面对并超越他们对死亡的恐惧。两个实验（N = 206；N = 401）测试了恐惧超越的三个前提条件，即（1）死亡在现实生活中是突出的； (2) 死亡是故事情节的核心，(3) 电影对死亡表达了特定的意义。我们评估了对超越恐惧的影响，具体化为减少对死亡的恐惧；死亡避免率降低；增加了对死亡的接受度。尤其是年长的观众，当超越恐惧的先决条件得到满足时，他们会变得不再那么回避，而更加接受死亡。因此，关于死亡的有意义的电影可以唤起超越恐惧的感觉。