Based on the terror management theory (TMT), this study integrated self-esteem and close relationships to explore the effects of group identification on death anxiety. Five hundred and four participants completed the Death Anxiety, Rosenberg Self-Esteem, Social Identity, and Inclusion of Other in the Self scales via online platforms. There were significant correlations among group identification, close relationship, self-esteem, and death anxiety. Group identification had a significant negative predictive effect on death anxiety. Specifically, group identification affects death anxiety through two pathways: the separate mediating role of self-esteem and the serial mediation pathway of close relationships → self-esteem. Our study provides direct evidence that group identification relieves death anxiety. The results showed that the alleviating function of group identification was mediated by self-esteem and close relationships. This study provides a new perspective concerning TMT as a defense mechanism against death anxiety.

Background: Under the Chinese collectivist cultural system, people emphasize social connections with close others and members of in-groups. Collectivism can be divided into the following two forms: relational collectivism (privileges relational self [RS]) and group collectivism (emphasizes collective self [CS]). Previous researchers have found a hierarchy between the RS and CS, resulting in different degrees of recognition advantages. However, the hierarchy between the RS and CS is unclear and may depend on the specific processing stage. Therefore, this research compared the hierarchy between these two selves during different processing stages using an eye-movement method. Methods: The sample consisted of thirty-eight young adults aged between 18 and 24 years old (M = 20.45, SD= 1.62). Each participant finished a dot-probe task featuring high-relevant (HR, ie one’s mother’s name and China) and low-relevant (LR, ie, name of a famous person and USA) information about the RS and CS and neutral information. Further, the eye-movement (EM) indices were collected simultaneously. Results: A stronger reaction time bias and longer total gaze duration revealed that young people in China focus more on RS information, indicating that Chinese people prioritize the RS over the CS at late stages of attentional processing. Conclusion: Information on interpersonal relationships and information on the in-group both catch people’s attention quickly and easily, but only RS information can maintain attention for longer. Understanding the hierarchy of the RS and the CS may provide more evidence for self-construal in the Chinese collectivist cultural context. The importance of the RS prompting that the interpersonal and close relationships are more important to the development of the self, suggesting that it is necessary to pay more attention to the impact of interpersonal support on people’s mental health in clinical applications.

People have three cognitive representations of the self, namely, the individual, relational, and collective selves (CS), which are indispensable components of selfhood but not necessarily given equal preference. Previous studies found that people displayed varied self-hierarchy in miscellaneous tasks involving different research materials that had pre-existing learned associations established over long periods of time. Therefore, this study tries to explore a purer self-hierarchy without the influence of research materials, using perceptual matching tasks. The behavioral and event-related potentials’ (ERPs) findings showed that people recognized information association with their individual self (IS) faster compared with their relational (RS) and CS. Smaller N2, stronger P3 and late positive complex (LPC) amplitudes were evoked during IS compared with RS and CS. However, the three selves evoked equal P2 amplitudes at the early processing stage. Moreover, CS showed a weaker advantage than RS, demonstrating a longer reaction time, lower d prime, and weaker P3 and LPC amplitudes in the parietal region. Overall, self-hierarchy during simple perceptual processing manifested as IS > RS > CS at the late processing stage but manifested as IS = RS = CS at the early processing stage. Self-hierarchy varies according to the processing stage, even without meaningful information and during the simple perception processing. This result provides direct evidence that all selves can be tagged with neutral actions, which would fit the idea of an organism attuned to self-survival at multiple processing levels.

Background/Objectives: Self-construal—the extent to which the self is construed as autonomous from or connected with others—shapes cognition and social behavior, yet its system-level neural architecture remains poorly understood. This study examined whether independent and interdependent self-construal are associated with distinct patterns of nodal centrality and connectivity in the resting brain and whether these patterns covary with in-group favoritism. Methods: Graph-theoretical analyses were applied to resting-state fMRI data from 67 college students. Degree centrality (DC) was the primary analysis; seed-based static functional connectivity (sFC) and dynamic functional connectivity variability (FCV) from DC-derived seeds served as exploratory follow-ups. In-group favoritism was assessed with a minimal-group point-allocation task. Results: Independent self-construal was positively associated with DC in the left inferior occipital gyrus and right lingual gyrus; exploratory sFC linked these occipital seeds to frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, with greater exploratory FCV in their coupling with frontoparietal control areas. Interdependent self-construal was positively associated with DC in the medial prefrontal cortex and thalamus, with exploratory sFC to occipital, temporal, and insular regions but no significant FCV effects. The self-construal difference score yielded convergent DC results and was negatively associated with in-group favoritism; occipital–postcentral coupling was positively associated with in-group favoritism in an exploratory correlation. Conclusions: Independent and interdependent self-construal are associated with distinct nodal centrality profiles, linking independence to occipital perceptual hubs and interdependence to medial prefrontal–thalamic hubs. Exploratory connectivity analyses extend these findings to the coupling of these hubs with distributed brain regions and to in-group favoritism.