Abstract
The current study examined whether gender and mortality salience, moderated by life history strategy (LHS), affected risk-taking. Six 2 (gender) x 4 (mortality salience prime: control, 5-months, 5-years, 50-years) ANCOVAS with life history as a covariate were conducted to examine their effects on aggression, gambling, general risk, future sexual risk, future substance use, and self-control (N = 397). The results showed that men scored higher on general risk, future sexual risk, and self-control than women as moderated by LHS. In addition, mortality salience increased gambling intentions, also moderated by LHS. Finally, there was a significant interaction of gender x mortality salience effect on aggression with men in the five years condition. These results indicated that gender, mortality salience, and LHS are significant factors in endorsement of future risky behaviors and are consistent with Life History (LH) theory.