ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
Deciphering the association between mortality salience and the "lying flat" movement: a social media analysis.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Introduction: When individuals face overwhelming situations, such as the heightened awareness of mortality triggered by the pandemic, they may adopt the "lying flat" response. "Lying flat," a movement on Chinese social media platforms, refers to the adoption of a minimalist lifestyle and the rejection of intensive life or work goals. However, the psychological mechanisms driving this phenomenon remain underexplored. Drawing on psychological perspectives of existential threat and coping strategies, this study aims to investigate whether mortality salience is associated with "lying flat" discourse and to determine if it functions primarily as a defensive or adaptive coping strategy. Methods: We analyzed 257,410 Weibo posts to examine the association between mortality salience and "lying flat" discourse on Weibo. Mortality salience was operationalized using pandemic death counts. We employed a keyword-assisted topic modeling approach to categorize the Weibo posts into defensive versus adaptive coping strategies. Crucially, we utilized stratified regression analyses to examine the association between mortality salience and the proportions of defensive and adaptive topics. Results: The results revealed that mortality salience was positively associated with the overall frequency of "lying flat" engagement, and users predominantly engaged in defensive coping mechanisms. Furthermore, stratified regression demonstrated that higher death tolls were significantly associated with an increased proportion of defensive topics (e.g., immediate gratification and avoidance) but a decrease in adaptive topics (e.g., re-evaluating life goals). Discussion: These findings suggest that digital "lying flat" may serve as a psychological buffer to mortality-related stress. Our results may indicate an asynchrony in these mechanisms, where adaptive responses emerge more slowly than immediate defensive reactions. We highlight the distinction between merely expressing "lying flat" and actual behavioral withdrawal. Finally, we underscore the importance of future cross-cultural research to comprehensively understand the global manifestations of such phenomenon under existential crises.
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