Terror management theory

Terror management theory (TMT) is a theory in social and evolutionary psychology which proposes a basic psychological conflict stemming from two competing facts of human existence: the instinct for self-preservation, and the realization that death is inevitable and to some extent unpredictable. This conflict produces terror, which is often managed through escapism and cultural beliefs that counter biological reality with more significant and enduring forms of meaning and value—basically countering the personal insignificance represented by death with the significance provided by symbolic culture.

The most obvious examples of cultural values that assuage death anxiety are those that purport to offer literal immortality (e.g. belief in the afterlife through religion). However, TMT also argues that other cultural values – including those that are seemingly unrelated to death – offer symbolic immortality. For example, values of national identity, cultural perspectives on sex, and human superiority over animals

Because cultural values influence what is meaningful, they are foundational for self-esteem. TMT describes self-esteem as being the personal, subjective measure of how well an individual is living up to their cultural values. The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profound – albeit subconscious – anxiety in people that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it. On large scales, societies build symbols: Laws, religious meanings, cultures, and belief systems to explain the significance of life, define what makes certain characteristics, skills, and talents extraordinary, reward others whom they find to exemplify certain attributes, and punish or kill others who do not adhere to their cultural worldview. Adherence to these created "symbols" aids in relieving stresses associated with the reality of mortality. On an individual level, self-esteem provides a buffer against death-related anxiety.

Background

In the 1st century CE, Statius in his Thebaid suggested that "fear first made gods in the world".

Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker asserted in his 1973 book The Denial of Death that humans, as intelligent animals, are able to grasp the inevitability of death. They therefore spend their lives building and believing in cultural elements that illustrate how to make themselves stand out as individuals and to give their lives significance and meaning. Death creates an anxiety in humans; it strikes at unexpected and random moments, and its nature is essentially unknowable, causing people to spend most of their time and energy to explain, forestall, and avoid it.

Becker expounded upon the previous writings of Sigmund Freud, Søren Kierkegaard, Norman O. Brown, and Otto Rank. According to clinical psychiatrist Morton Levitt, Becker replaces the Freudian preoccupation with sexuality with the fear of death as the primary motivation in human behavior.

People desire to think of themselves as beings of value and worth with a feeling of permanence, a concept in psychology known as self-esteem. This feeling counters the cognitive dissonance created by an individual's realization that they may be no more important than any other living thing. Becker refers to high self-esteem as heroism:

The rationale behind decisions regarding one's own health can be explored through a terror-management model. A 2008 research article in Psychological Review proposes a three-part model for understanding how awareness of death can ironically subvert health-promoting behaviors by redirecting one's focus towards behaviors that build self-esteem instead:

Evolutionary backdrop

Terror-management theorists regard TMT as compatible with the theory of evolution:

Self-esteem

Self-esteem lies at the heart of TMT and is a fundamental aspect of its core paradigms. TMT fundamentally seeks to elucidate the causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem. Theoretically, it draws heavily from Ernest Becker's conceptions of culture and self-esteem. TMT not only attempts to explain the concept of self-esteem, it also tries to explain why we need self-esteem. One explanation is that self-esteem is used as a coping mechanism for anxiety. It helps people control their sense of terror and nullify the realization that humans are just animals trying to manage the world around them. According to TMT, self-esteem is a sense of personal value that is created by beliefs in the validity of one's cultural worldview, and the belief that one is living up to the cultural standards created by that worldview. In other words, an individual's suppression of death anxiety may arise from their overall need to increase their self-esteem in a positive manner. Arndt et al. (2009) conducted three studies to examine how peer perceptions and social acceptance of smokers contributes to their quitting, as well as if, and why these people continue smoking for outside reasons, even when faced with thoughts of death and anti-smoking prompts.

Conversely, self-esteem can work in the opposite manner. Research has confirmed that individuals with higher self-esteem, particularly in regard to their behavior, have a more positive attitude towards their life. Specifically, death cognition in the form of anti-smoking warnings weren't effective for smokers and in fact, increased their already positive attitudes towards the behavior. The reasons behind individuals' optimistic attitudes towards smoking after mortality was made salient, indicate that people use positivity as a buffer against anxiety. Continuing to hold certain beliefs even after they are shown to be flawed creates cognitive dissonance regarding current information and past behavior, and one way to alleviate this is to simply reject new information. Therefore, anxiety buffers such as self-esteem allow individuals to cope with their fears more easily. Death cognition may in fact cause negative reinforcement that leads people to further engage in dangerous behaviors (smoking in this instance) because accepting the new information would lead to a loss of self-esteem, increasing vulnerability and awareness of mortality. having participants watch graphic depictions of death, etc.). Like the other TMT hypotheses, the literature supporting the MS hypothesis is vast and diverse. For a meta-analysis of MS research, see Burke et al. (2010).

Experimentally, the MS hypothesis has been tested in close to 200 empirical articles. had Christian participants evaluate other Christian and Jewish students that were similar demographically, but differed in their religious affiliation. After being reminded of their death (experimental MS induction), Christian participants evaluated fellow Christians more positively, and Jewish participants more negatively, relative to the control condition. Conversely, bolstering self-esteem in these scenarios leads to less worldview defense and derogation of dissimilar others. The participants were placed in two different conditions; one group of participants were given an article relating to the fear of death, while the control group received an article unrelated to death, dealing with the fear of public speaking. More specifically, the researchers were exploring how participants acted in terms of self-esteem, and its impact on how mortality-related health-risk information would be received. However, there are many different factors to take into consideration, such as how strongly an individual feels toward a decision, his or her level of self-esteem, and the situation around the individual. Particularly with people's smoking behaviors, self-esteem and mortality salience have different effects on individuals' decisions. In terms of the longevity of their smoking decisions, it has been seen that individuals' smoking habits are affected, in the short-term sense, when they are exposed to mortality salience that interrelates with their own self-esteem. Moreover, people who viewed social exclusion prompts were more likely to quit smoking in the long run than those who were simply shown health-effects of smoking.

The DTA hypothesis has its origins in work by Greenberg et al. (1994)

In these initial studies (i.e., Greenberg et al. (2004); Arndt et al. (1997)), and in numerous subsequent DTA studies, the main measure of DTA is a word fragment task, whereby participants can complete word fragments in distinctly death-related ways (e.g., coff_ _ as coffin, not coffee) or in non death-related ways (e.g., sk_ _l as skill, not skull).

Importance of the Death Thought Accessibility hypothesis

The introduction of this hypothesis has refined TMT, and led to new avenues of research that formerly could not be assessed due to the lack of an empirically validated way of measuring death-related cognitions. Also, the differentiation between proximal (conscious, near, and threat-focused) and distal (unconscious, distant, symbolic) defenses that have been derived from DTA studies have been extremely important in understanding how people deal with their terror.

It is important to note how the DTA paradigm subtly alters, and expands, TMT as a motivational theory. Instead of solely manipulating mortality and witnessing its effects (e.g., nationalism, increased prejudice, risky sexual behavior, etc.), the DTA paradigm allows a measure of the death-related cognitions that result from various affronts to the self. Examples include threats to self-esteem and to one's worldview; the DTA paradigm can therefore assess the role of death-thoughts in self-esteem and worldview defenses. Furthermore, the DTA hypothesis lends support to TMT in that it corroborates its central hypothesis that death is uniquely problematic for human beings, and that it is fundamentally different in its effects than meaning threats (i.e., Heine et al., 2006) and that is death itself, and not uncertainty and lack of control associated with death; Fritsche et al. (2008) explore this idea.

Since its inception, the DTA hypothesis had been rapidly gaining ground in TMT investigations, and as of 2009, has been employed in over 60 published papers, with a total of more than 90 empirical studies. Age and death anxiety both are factors that should be considered in the terror management theory, in relation to health-promoting behaviors. Age undoubtedly plays some kind of role in people's health-promoting behaviors; however, an actual age-related effect on death anxiety and health-promoting behaviors has yet to be seen. Although research has demonstrated that for young adults only, when they were prompted with death related scenarios, they yielded more health-promoting behaviors, compared to those participants in their sixties. In addition, death anxiety has been found to have an effect for young adults, on their behaviors of health promotion.

On the other hand, death and thoughts of death can serve as a way of empowering the self, not as threats. Researchers, Cooper et al. (2011) explored TMHM in terms of empowerment, specifically using BSEs under two conditions; when death thoughts were prompted, and when thoughts of death were non-conscious.

Leadership

It has been suggested that culture provides meaning, organization, and a coherent world-view that diminishes the psychological terror caused by the knowledge of eventual death. The terror management theory can help to explain why a leader's popularity can grow substantially during times of crisis. When a follower's mortality is made prominent they will tend to show a strong preference for iconic leaders. An example of this occurred when George W. Bush's approval rating jumped almost 50 percent following the September 11 attacks in the United States. As Forsyth (2009) posits, this tragedy made U.S. citizens aware of their mortality, and Bush provided an antidote to these existential concerns by promising to bring justice to the terrorist group responsible for the attacks.

Researchers Cohen et al. (2004), in their particular study on TMT, tested the preferences for different types of leaders, while reminding people of their mortality. Three different candidates were presented to participants. The three leaders were of three different types: task-oriented (emphasized setting goals, strategic planning, and structure), relationship-oriented (emphasized compassion, trust, and confidence in others), and charismatic. The participants were then placed in one of two conditions: mortality salient or control group. In the former condition the participants were asked to describe the emotions surrounding their own death, as well as the physical act of the death itself, whereas the control group were asked similar questions about an upcoming exam. The results of the study were that the charismatic leader was favored more, and the relationship-oriented leader was favored less, in the mortality-salient condition. Further research has shown that mortality salient individuals also prefer leaders who are members of the same group, as well as men rather than women (Hoyt et al. 2010). This has links to social role theory.

Religion

TMT posits that religion was created as a means for humans to cope with their own mortality. Supporting this, arguments in favor of life after death, and simply being religious, reduce the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. Thoughts of death have also been found to increase religious beliefs. At an implicit, subconscious level, this is the case even for people who claim to be nonreligious.

Mental health

Some researchers have argued that death anxiety may play a central role in numerous mental health conditions. To test whether death anxiety causes a particular mental illness, TMT researchers use a mortality salience experiment, and examine whether reminding participants of death leads to increased prevalence of behaviors associated with that mental illness. Such studies have shown that reminders of death lead to increases in compulsive handwashing in obsessive-compulsive disorder, avoidance in spider phobias and social anxiety, and anxious behaviors in other disorders, including panic disorder and health anxiety, suggesting the role of death anxiety in these conditions according to TMT researchers.

Criticisms

Criticisms of terror management theory have been based on several lines of arguments:

Suppression of fear and anxiety is implausible from an evolutionary point of view.
The observed psychological responses to terrifying cues are better explained by coalitional psychology and theories of collective defense.
The responses can be explained as fear of uncertainty and the unknown.
The responses can be explained as search for meaning of life and mortality.
The experimental results are difficult to replicate.

These arguments are discussed in the following sections.

Evolutionary argument

Anxiety and fear are psychological responses that have evolved because they help us avoid danger. A mechanism to suppress anxiety and fear, as postulated by TMT, is unlikely to have evolved because it would reduce the chances of survival.

It is argued that TMT relies on misguided assumptions about evolved human nature originating from psychoanalytic theory.

Critics argue that the observed responses are not only evoked by cues of essential mortality, but more generally by cues of danger or insecurity.

Proponents of TMT argue that the coalitional psychology theory is a black box explanation that 1) cannot account for the fact that virtually all cultures have a supernatural dimension; 2) does not explain why cultural worldview defense is symbolic, involving allegiance to both specific and general systems of abstract meaning unrelated to specific threats, rather than focused on the specific adaptive threats it supposedly evolved to deal with; and, 3) dismisses TMT's dual process account of the underlying processes that generate MS effects without providing an alternative of any kind or attempting to account for the data relevant to this aspect of the TMT analysis.

TMT theorists however, have explained how CP dismisses TMT's dual process shown in lab studies whereby proximal and distal defenses deal with threats differently; with the former doing so more "pragmatically" due to greater conscious awareness, and the latter more symbolically due to unconscious thought recession. This would account for the study's distinction between individual and collective danger — with the former being more proximal and the latter more distal. Unlike TMT, CP does not view national, political and religious coalitions as imagined communities that represent primarily cultural worldviews (distal defenses).

Similarly, another study has found that the response of system justification postulated by TMT theorists is increased by salience of terrorism, not by salience of individual mortality.

Earlier experimental findings can be explained by the fact that individual danger and collective danger are seriously confounded.

The findings that the observed responses are connected with collective danger rather than individual danger was predicted by regality theory. This finding is in agreement with authoritarianism theory, realistic group conflict theory, and Ronald Inglehart's theory of modernization, but not in agreement with CP's interpretation of terror management theory, which omits its distal/proximal dual defense model.

Other studies have found effects similar to those that mortality salience results in – for example, thinking about difficult personal choices to be made, being made to respond to open-ended questions regarding uncertainty, thinking about being robbed, thinking about being socially isolated, and being told that one's life lacks meaning.

TMT theorists argue that meaning management theory cannot describe why different sets of meaning are preferred by different people, and that different types of meaning have different psychological functions.

For example, these researchers posited that people defend themselves by altering their fear responses from uncertainty to an enthusiasm approach.

TMT theorists agree that uncertainty can be disconcerting in some cases and it may even result in defense responses, but note that they believe the inescapability of death and the possibility of its finality regarding one's existence is most unsettling. They also note that people actually seek out some types of uncertainty, and that being uncertain is not always very unpleasant. For example, a surprise involves uncertainty, but is only perceived as pleasant if there is sufficient certainty that the surprise will be pleasant.

Though TMT theorists acknowledge that many responses to mortality salience involve greater approaches (zealousness) towards important worldviews, they also note examples of mortality salience which resulted in the opposite, which offensive defensiveness cannot account for: when negative features of a group to which participants belong were made salient, people actively distanced themselves from that group under mortality salience. The test is a multi-lab replication of Study 1 of Greenberg et al. (1994).

Popularity

Psychologist Yoel Inbar summarized the popularity of the theory:

References

Bibliography

Becker, Ernest (1973). The Denial of Death, The Free Press.
Pyszczynski, Thomas; Solomon, Sheldon; Greenberg, Jeff (2003). In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror, American Psychological Association.
Solomon, Sheldon, Greenberg, J. & Pyszczynski, T. (1991) "A terror management theory of social behavior: The psychological functions of esteem and cultural worldviews", in M. P. Zanna (Ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 24, Academic Press, pp. 93–159.