When Your Mortality Salience Induction Fails: Other Factors That Influence Predicted Risk-Taking in College Students

College students engage in risky behaviors, and previous research suggests that narcissistic characteristics and mortality salience might serve to increase such risk taking. Even though mortality salience did not predict risk taking, we have evidence to suggest that religious affiliation, belief in an afterlife, cultural closeness, self-esteem, and narcissism did.