Terror Management Theory (TMT)

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Terror Management
Theory (TMT)
How the fear of death fundamentally influences
the development of personality Russ
Webster Theories of Personality rjwebster_at_bsu.edu
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TMTs Existential Roots

• What is existentialism?
• Philosophy looking at big, abstract ideas
• What does it mean to be human?
• Why are we here?
• How did we come to be?
• Basically, the search for meaning
• Old philosophy
• Dates back to western classical era
• Continued through Renaissance and today
• Find it in paintings, music, literature

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TMTs Existential Roots

• Existential psychology began in reaction to
  Freuds theories
• Both Freudian and existential psych explore the
  motivational consequences of human (unconscious)
  conflicts
• However, they differ in which conflicts
  fundamentally influence human behavior
• For Freud we manage sexual conflict
• For existential psychs our search for meaning,
  freedom, coherence ultimately stemmed from the
  fear of death

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TMT Theorists

• Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon
  Solomon were all grad students at University of
  Kansas in the 1970s
• They felt
• dismayed by the massive popularity of purely
  cognitive explanations for human behavior and
• that something big was being left out of
  psychological research
• Yet, for decades psychodynamic theories were
  snubbed because they were not falsifiable
  unable to be confirmed or refuted

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TMT Theorists

• Yet the cognitive revolution did give us
  innovative tools to study inner workings of the
  mind
• Greenberg et al. saw the potential to apply these
  new tools to support a broad and progressive
  theory
• Penned theoretical papers explaining TMTs
  principles (1986)
• Ernest Beckers (1976) The Denial of Death
  cornerstone of theory

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TMT Main Tenets

• Fear of death is innate universal
• Self-awareness leads to the recognition that
  death is unstoppable and unpredictable
• Fear of death fundamental source of human
  conflict and anxiety
• Death naturally conflicts with our powerful
  self-preservation and freedom instincts
• Ultimate motive to manage this terror
• Thus, TMT holds that human behavior fundamentally
  demonstrates how we cope or manage this anxiety
  this terror of death
• From intergroup conflict to self-esteem needs,
  TMT has an explanation

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Youve got to be kidding me?

• How often do you really think about death daily?
• How can death be responsible for intergroup
  conflict?
• We learn to automatically that is,
  unconsciously repress and manage the fear of
  death using a dual-component buffer
• A) Self-esteem
• B) Culture (individualized worldview)

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Culture Self-esteem Terror management
mechanisms

• It all goes back to childhood, right?
• Awareness of death
• Before full awareness The monster under the
  bed
• Full awareness not until around 10 12 y/o
• But from infancy
• Develop relationship between being good and
  having our needs met, anxiety alleviated
• Develop a sense of the self (i.e., self-esteem)
  through these caregiver-child transactions
• Explains our obsession with high self-esteem
• From childhood
• Adults edify children in cultural standards and
  beliefs
• Culture provides meaning, permanence, stability
• Link between fulfilling cultural standards
  (being good) and alleviation of anxiety then
  developed
• Culture may serve as a proxy caregiver

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Initial Reactions

• Reaction to first theoretical papers was scornful
• American Psychologist editors
• I have no doubt that these ideas are of
  absolutely no interest to any psychologist, alive
  or dead.
• TMT theorists reply
• We had been hoping that at least the dead might
  have shown some interest
• Must empirically test TMT before others took
  serious consideration

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1. The Anxiety Buffer hypothesis

• states that high self-esteem, derived from
  upholding parental and cultural standards,
  shields individuals from experiencing (death)
  anxiety
• Empirical research says
• Greenberg et al. (1992) High self-esteem
  lessened self-reported anxiety
• in anticipation of electric shocks
• in response to graphic video
• in response to receiving information detailing a
  short life expectancy
• Self-esteem also moderated Ps physiological
  response in anticipation of electric shocks

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2. Mortality Salience hypothesis

• states that when people are reminded of death
  (mortality salience), they will use various
  terror management (defense) mechanisms to rid
  death thoughts from the mind to return to a
  composed psychological state
• Seeing that culture is vital to ward off death
  anxiety, people should defend their worldviews
  after mortality salience (i.e., elicit worldview
  defense)
• Worldview defense can either involve
• a) criticizing others disparate worldviews or
• b) praising others who uphold your worldview

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First empirical studies

• Rosenblatt et al. (1989)
• Completed mortality questionnaire or not
• Judges read case brief and then allotted bail to
  the alleged prostitute
• amount ranged from 100 - 999
• Results
• After mortality salience 455 vs.
• Control condition 50

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Rosenblatt et al. (1989) cont.

• Also added heroine condition in which Ps
  allotted reward amount to female who apprehended
  thief (1,000 - 4,000)
• After mortality salience 3,476 vs.
• Control condition 1,112

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Mortality Salience Results

• MS not only affects attitudes
• e.g., increased derogation of various outgroup
  members (e.g., Christians vs. Jews)
• But also overt behavioral responses
• Increased aggression against worldview
  transgressors (e.g., allotted more hot sauce to
  targets who criticized ones political views)
• Decreased affiliation with dissimilar others
  (e.g., where one chooses, if at all, to sit with
  worldview threats)
• A powerful experimental manipulation documented
  in hundreds of experiments

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The Psychodynamics of TMT

• What actually happens, cognitively, during these
  experiments?
• Participants are unaware of worldview defense
  after mortality salience
• How do we investigate unconscious processes
  processes of which participants have no awareness
  and on which cannot report?
• Refer now to the diagram I passed out

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Your worldview sucks!
Im going to live forever!
DELAY
Proximal Effects
Distal Effects
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Skeptics? Anyone?

• Our unconscious yeah, right!
• Conclusive evidence demonstrates how big a role
  our unconscious plays
• Our conscious mind only has limited capacities,
  thus our unconscious must pick up the slack
• Such evidence explains how terror management
  mechanisms occur without our awareness
• Experiments not generalizable..?
• However, results transcend
• Gender, cultures (East and West), and age
• Mortality salience questionnaire not only
  manipulation used to present death reminders

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Prague, Czech Republic
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The Scope of TMT

• The scope of TMT is huge!
• Keep in mind
• Death reminders are everywhere
• Media! Newspapers, TV, movies
• The fear of death is universal and transcends the
  usual boundaries (e.g., age, region)
• The fear of death is (at least partly) influences
  a variety of seemingly unrelated, but
  consequential, human behavior
• Political, forensic, social, developmental, etc.
  applications abound
• Is there such a thing as rational behavior, then?

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Thank You! Questions? Comments?