Abstract: Terror management theory has suggested that increased attention on self may therefor increase individual's concern with their own death. In order to cope with the death anxiety, people will tend to avoid self-awareness. Recent researches have repeatedly shown that reminders of mortality impaired self-referential processing and self-face processing. As a kind of symbolized self, self-name is special in emotional value and psychological meaning. The current work investigated whether reminders of mortality motivated avoidance of self-name processing. In the experiment, 58 college students were randomly assigned to one of the three priming conditions (priming: mortality salience priming vs. negative priming vs. neutral priming). participants in the mortality salience condition wrote responses to two open ended questions:‘Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you’, and ‘Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead. In the neutral condition participants responded to parallel questions focused on move: ‘Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your move arouses in you’, and ‘Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically move and once you are physically move, and in the negative condition participants focused on toothache:‘Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own toothache arouses in you’, and ‘Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically toothache and once you are physically toothache.. After that, they were asked to perform 40 calculations. In rapid series of visual presentation (RSVP) task, each trial consisted of a first target (T1, left arrow or right arrow) and a second target (T2, a celebrity's name or a friend's name or one's own name or black) embedded of 20 common nouns. Each subject was instructed to press the “F” key (T1: left; T2: male),“J” key (T1: right; T2: female) and “L” key if T2 was black. The ERPs results suggested that The P300 (380~470ms) of self-name in mortality salience priming were lower than the P300 of self-name in negative priming and neutral priming, and there was no significant difference of friend-name or famous-name among three different priming. The P300 of self-name were higher than P300 of friend-name and famous-name, and the P300 of friend-name was higher than the P300 of famous-name. Our findings suggest that relative to the negative affect priming and neutral priming, reminders of mortality priming significantly decreased the amplitudes of P300 in response to self-name, meanwhile friend-name and famous-name were not been affected. In sum, these results suggested that reminders of mortality reduced the attention source of self-name processing. The finding of the present study have enhanced our understanding of TMT, suggesting a direct role of shutting down self-awareness, as a means of coping with mortality concerns.

Key words: mortality salience, terror management theory, self-name, attentional blink, ERP