1. Terror Management Theory (TMT)

2. TMT is based on the idea that as humans, we are uniquely aware of the inevitability of death

3. TMT Foundations TMT is based on the notion that unlike other animals, humans’ advanced cognitive abilities to think abstractly and symbolically make us aware of the fragility of our existence and the inevitability of our own death Our instinctual desire for self-preservation makes the thought of death particularly frightening To protect ourselves from the terror of death, we create a system of meaning (culture and religion), which gives our lives and deaths significance These institutions allow us to carry on with everyday life mostly undisturbed by the knowledge that one day, we will die

4. Culture and TMT So why is culture protective against death anxiety? Gives a sense of order and predictability: calendars and clocks help to organize us and enhance our belief in predictability Provides meaning for our lives: often cultures provide answers to questions such as how did the world begin? What is the purpose of life? Cultures usually contain explicit beliefs about what happens after we die – thus symbolically extending our lives indefinitely If we belong to a group, even if individuals die, the group lives on, so there is a sense of permanence

5. Culture and TMT When we live up to the values of our particular culture, we can achieve: Literal immortality: when we believe in an afterlife, by living up to the standards of our culture, we can essentially avoid death entirely For example, Catholics believe that by confessing their sins regularly (i.e., living up to their cultural values), they will go to heaven (i.e., achieving immortality) Symbolic immortality: by identifying ourselves with larger groups, even though we may die, the group will not – thus providing us with a symbolic type of immortality For example, if I am a patriotic American, even if I know I may die, I might be comforted by helping to make the country stronger for future generations (a type of symbolic immortality)

6. Self-esteem and TMT Self-esteem can be defined as “the perception that one is a valuable member of a meaningful universe” (J. Greenberg et al., 1997, p. 66) Although everyone has self-esteem, how we derive our self-esteem depends on what is valued by our particular culture For example, for people in individualistic cultures such as America, self-esteem is derived mostly from individual achievements. However, for people in collectivistic cultures such as Japan, self-esteem is derived more from group achievements. Thus, we evaluate ourselves based on how much we are living up to culturally valued expectations

7. Self-esteem and TMT Self-esteem is protective against death anxiety and can come from belonging to a culture or group When we adopt culturally valued social roles in our group, our self-esteem is boosted, and we feel that we have a purpose in life For example, as a psychologist, I gain in self-esteem by feeling that I provide an important service to others in my country We can also enhance our self-esteem by displaying attributes that are valued by our culture, behaving in ways that fit in with our culture, obtaining culturally valued achievements, and defending our culture when threatened For example, by wearing the football jersey of our favorite team to a game, we are showing our allegiance as well as following a group norm, and our self-esteem can be enhanced as a result

8. Prejudice and Intolerance So, our identification with a culture and the self-esteem that results buffer us from death anxiety, according to TMT But this works only when we have faith in our cultural worldview When others question our worldview or advocate a different worldview, that might shake our own faith in our worldview This is why, according to TMT, we respond so strongly to others who do not share our worldview Often, we derogate the alternative worldview or the people who hold that view Or we may try to convince them to adopt our perspective

9. Terror Management Summary To summarize: People have a powerful self-preservation instinct and are, due to their intelligence, aware of their own impending death In order to avoid the potential terror of death, people try to increase their self- esteem (i.e., the belief that they are a valuable contributor to a meaningful universe) by acting in accordance with their cultural values In order to prevent overwhelming death anxiety, people must feel secure that: Their cultural worldview is accurate They are meeting the standards prescribed by their worldview (and thus have high self- esteem)

10. Now that you understand TMT… In the previous slides, I have outlined Terror Management Theory (TMT) In the next segment of the lecture, I will describe various studies that were designed to demonstrate that TMT is accurate Thus, I will go over a range of hypotheses derived from TMT and then briefly describe the research that was found to support those hypotheses

11. Self-Esteem as an Anxiety Buffer? The anxiety-buffer hypothesis: if a psychological structure provides protection against anxiety, then building up that structure should reduce anxiety in response to threats So, we predict that strengthening someone’s self-esteem or faith in their cultural worldview should protect them from anxiety when they are in a threatening situation Experiment: Greenberg et al. (1992) either increased or decreased participants’ self- esteem by providing them with positive or negative feedback on measures of intelligence or personality. When participants’ self-esteem was increased, they reported less anxiety after watching a death-related video and were less scared at the threat of a painful electric shock than when their self-esteem was decreased.

12. Prejudice and Fear of Death Much research has demonstrated that people tend to dislike those who are different from themselves even when the different others pose no real threat Our cultural worldviews are sustained only through social consensus, and they are fragile – so those with differing worldviews can easily threaten our own For example, I am a staunch Democrat, and talking to people who are Republicans really raises my blood pressure quickly, even though they pose no immediate threat to me! Interestingly, research has also shown that when people think about death, this tendency is heightened

13. Mortality Salience Mortality salience = making people aware of the possibility of their own death This can be done in numerous ways such as: Have people view a supposedly unrelated video with images of death and dying Have people do a word-finding task where a lot of the words have to do with death (such as funeral, casket, graveyard) Even just having people stand outside of a funeral parlor while answering questions has been shown to increase their unconscious thoughts about death!

14. Prejudice and Fear of Death Mortality salience experiments: Greenberg and colleagues (1990) found that when subjects’ mortality was made salient, Christian participants rated other Christians more positively and Jews more negatively than when they were not reminded of death This experiment has been repeated with many groups such as Americans (when they are reminded of death, they rate other Americans more positively and non-Americans more negatively) So, when we are reminded of death, we tend to value those in our own culture more highly than others Presumably, this is an attempt to strengthen our own worldview to protect us from death anxiety

15. Prejudice and Fear of Death Mortality salience has not only been shown to increase our liking of our own group and disliking of other groups, but it has even been shown to engender more obviously prejudiced views For example, when some Christian subjects were reminded of death, they were more likely to agree that the Holocaust was “God’s punishment for the Jews,” an anti-Semitic point of view (Greenberg et al., 1990) Mortality salience has also been shown to affect our behaviors: Ochsmann and Mathy (1994) found that when students were reminded of death, they sat closer to those from the same country than those from other countries

16. Prejudice and Fear of Death However, mortality salience leads only to prejudice against groups that threaten our worldviews So, even though there is prejudice among white Americans against African-Americans, mortality salience does not necessarily increase this prejudice because African-Americans do not generally hold a different belief system from Caucasians However, a black person who conforms to the white stereotypes of blacks may actually validate the white worldview, whereas black people who go against the stereotypes may be seen as more threatening It was found that when white participants were reminded of their own mortality, they liked the more stereotypical African-American (such as a basketball player) better than an African-American who went against stereotypes (like Barack Obama)

17. Mortality and Aggression Being reminded of death can also cause participants in studies to behave more aggressively to one another: McGregor and colleagues (1996) reminded half of conservative and liberal participants of death, then let them choose how much hot sauce to give to another participant who was from the opposite viewpoint and claimed not to like spicy foods. Those who had been reminded of death allocated much more hot sauce to the other person than those who were not reminded of death. This suggests that when we are reminded of death, we will more strongly defend our own worldviews, even if this means acting aggressively toward others with differing views

18. Mortality and Prosocial Behavior However, being reminded of your mortality can also cause people to act in more prosocial ways to members of their groups – this is generally in accordance with cultural values and enhances one’s self-esteem Rosenblatt and colleagues (1989) found that when people were reminded of death, they increased the amount of a reward offered to a hero who acted in accordance with cultural values Pyszcynski and colleagues (1996) interviewed subjects about the value of various charities on the street – when they were interviewed in front of a funeral home, they valued the charities more This shows that even subtle reminders of death can have a big impact

19. Mortality and Consensus Part of the reason that we do not like others with differing worldviews is that we want to think that most people agree with our worldview (remember, social consensus makes us confident in our views) Experiment: when people were stopped on the street in front of a funeral parlor, they tended to predict that more people shared their view on a controversial political issue than when they were asked in another part of the street (Pyszczynski et al., 2009) Subtle reminders of death make us more confident that our views are the popular ones – a buffer against death anxiety

20. Desire to Meet Cultural Standards and Mortality Salience Because self-esteem is acquired by living up to standards that are valued by your culture, research has examined whether people try harder to meet cultural standards when mortality is made salient Experiment: Paulhus and Levitt (1987) asked subjects to rate whether various adjectives applied to them while other distractor words were presented (some of the words were about death, so mortality was salient). When words about death were presented, subjects would rate themselves higher on traits that are more culturally valued than when there were no words about death presented This supports the idea that when mortality is salient, we try harder to live up to cultural values

21. Desire to Meet Cultural Standards and Mortality Salience People also become increasingly uncomfortable going against cultural values when mortality is made salient Experiment: Greenberg and colleagues (1995) asked Christian American subjects to solve two problems that required creative solutions. The best solutions required them to sift black dye through an American flag (ruining the flag) and to hammer a nail into the wall using a crucifix. They found that when the person had first been made to think about death, they took longer to solve the problems, were more tense when solving them, and reported that the tasks were more difficult afterward.

22. Mortality and Self-Focus TMT also predicts that it is because we are self-aware that makes us aware of our own deaths Thus, it was hypothesized that if we are made to think about death, it will be less pleasant to be aware of ourselves Pyszcynski and colleagues (1990) conducted a study where participants had to write an essay about death or an exam in cubicles that did or did not contain mirrors (mirrors make us more self-aware). When participants were asked to write about death with the mirror present, they spent significantly less time on the task than when asked to write about the exam or when in a cubicle without the mirror. This indicates that when we are made aware of death, we have much less willingness to be made self-aware

23. Does TMT Affect People Differently? Not all people respond in the same way to reminders of death Authoritarian personality: people with a high regard for authority, who are very rigid and inflexible, and who are conventional in their beliefs People with these traits tend to defend their worldviews the most vigorously when death is salient People with these traits also tend to be more politically conservative In fact, studies have shown that those who are very liberal become less prejudiced than conservatives when mortality is made salient However, when all types of people are reminded of tolerance (a cultural value), they also tend not to become as prejudiced after being reminded of death

24. Personality Traits and Mortality We have talked about how situationally manipulating people’s self-esteem can cause people to behave differently when reminded of death, but what about personality differences in self-esteem? Not surprisingly, people who tend to be generally higher in self-esteem are less defensive when presented with other worldviews, even when mortality is made salient People who are depressed are thought to be struggling to sustain their cultural worldviews Thus, when mortality is made salient, they defend their worldviews with particular vigor – like the drowning person clinging as much as possible to a life boat

25. Death Versus Negative Feelings But wait—is it only being reminded of death that makes us defend our worldviews, or do we do this whenever we are reminded of anything sad? Greenberg and colleagues (1995) tested this hypothesis by having college students either think about their concerns about life after college (general negative mood) or think about death. Only the students who thought about death were more punitive towards someone who went against their cultural values (a prostitute) This indicates that it is actually thinking of death, not just anything that makes us worry, that causes mortality salience effects

26. So what exactly happens when we think about death??? In the first moments that we are consciously reminded of death, we first deal with these thoughts consciously by: Minimizing the threat (e.g., cancer is no big deal; not everyone gets it) Redefining the situation to be less severe than it is (e.g., even if I do get cancer, many people fight it off) Denying one’s own vulnerability to a dangerous situation (e.g., I do not smoke, so I will not get cancer) Thinking about how far off the threat is (e.g., I am still young; I will not get cancer for many years)

27. So what exactly happens when we think about death? The thoughts presented in the preceding slide allow us consciously to put thoughts of death out of our minds It is only AFTER we consciously put thoughts of death out of our minds that the mortality salience effects of defending our worldview take place – these happen at an unconscious level In fact, studies have shown that while people are consciously thinking about death, they do not vigorously defend their worldviews; this effect is more pronounced after a delay or if the idea of death is presented in a subtle way (i.e., when the fear of death is unconscious)

28. So what exactly happens when we think about death? When we are reminded of death more subtly so that it does not reach consciousness, the conscious suppression of death-related thoughts through rationalization does not take place For example, when someone is standing outside a funeral parlor answering questions, they likely are not fully aware that they are being reminded of death, so no rationalization takes place In this case, mortality salience effects take place immediately, as you are aware of death only at an unconscious level

29. So what exactly happens when we think about death? Interestingly, studies have shown that thinking of death does not upset people particularly – There is no physiological arousal However, they do find that the more people deny feeling upset by thinking about death, the more vigorously they defend their worldviews Thus, it seems that defending one’s worldview and denying death anxiety are actually effective unconscious strategies that reduce emotional discomfort when we are reminded of death Being afraid of death is largely unconscious, and we tend to work to deny this fear without realizing we are doing so

30. So what exactly happens when we think about death? To review, when reminded of death: Initially, we deal with thoughts about death by rationally (and consciously) trying to talk ourselves out of getting scared (but only if the death reminder occurs at a conscious level) This helps us to suppress (i.e., forget about) our fear of death But unconsciously, we are still worried about it – we will vigorously defend our worldviews at this stage To add the next step to the story: over time we relax our defenses, and these thoughts of death become more accessible to our conscious minds once again However, when self-esteem is buffered, even after we relax, we do not think more about death

31. How do we know this happens? A number of ingenious experiments have been conducted that support the rationale presented in the last few slides. I will review just one piece of research, but there is much more in the article I assigned if you would like to look more into it When people are reminded of death, they actively try to suppress these thoughts (i.e., they try not to think about them). This requires cognitive energy. So if people are given a task that keeps them cognitively busy (like reading numbers aloud), they are not able also to suppress their thoughts about death, and so these thoughts remain conscious for longer, and mortality salience effects such as defending one’s worldview do not take place immediately (Greenberg et al., 1994)

32. The end