Terror Management Theory and self-awareness

 The juxtaposition of what humans were born into and what they naturally desired created certain existential dilemmas with which they had to contend. Irvin Yalom (1980) delineated four ultimate concerns and proposed that the individual’s confrontation with each of these “givens of existence” constituted a major existential conflict. These four concerns are death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. Human beings wish to continue being, yet they are inevitably finite (death). They wish for ground and structure, yet there is no universal design or plan for human life other than that which humans create, leaving people responsible for creating themselves and their world (freedom). They wish for communion with others and to be part of something larger than themselves, yet they are born alone and ultimately die alone (isolation). They desperately seek meaning, yet there is no preordained, inherent meaning to the universe (meaninglessness). According to Yalom, each of these clashes between the structure of existence and the wishes of the self-reflective human being spawns conscious and unconscious fears and motives. Existential psychology is the branch of psychology that investigates how these fears and motives affect humankind, and how they interact with the other needs and desires that are essential to human existence

For most of the still brief history of psychology, the existential subdiscipline was synonymous with existential psychotherapy; its concepts and theories were scattered in a piecemeal fashion within the existing literature; and it had little interaction with empirically oriented psychological science (Jacobsen, 2007). The methodology of existential psychological research was qualitative and descriptive, with a particular emphasis on phenomenology. Notwithstanding the rich insights these methods are capable of yielding, causal inferences regarding the effect of existential realities on human motivation can be made only through rigorous experimental research. This is why terror management theory’s application of experimental methods to existential psychological questions has been an invigorating contribution to existential psychology, resulting in the prolific subfield of social psychology known as experimental existential psychology (see Greenberg, Koole, & Pyszczynski, 2004; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, & Koole, 2010).

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory was inspired by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s (1971, 1973, 1975) attempts to integrate and synthesize what he viewed as the most important insights into the human condition provided by the social and natural sciences, as well as humanities. Building on the work of thinkers as diverse as Freud, Rank, Mead, Fromm, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, Becker built on the premise that the idea of death is unbearable to a self-aware animal: “To have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this yet to die” (1973, p. 87). To Becker, the terror inherent in this knowledge haunted humans like nothing else and was a mainspring of human activity: “Of all things that move man, one of the principal ones is his terror of death” (1973, p. 11). In his view, a major function of individual character and societal institutions was to deny one’s mortality and avert this terror. He viewed human striving for a sense of value and unshakable meaning as the primary defense against the terror-inducing awareness of mortality, and he conceptualized this striving as taking place within the context of the cultural worldviews to which people subscribe. To Becker, participating in and contributing to a cultural system that imbues existence with order, purpose, and permanence provided the individual with a feeling of outliving or outshining death and the psychological equanimity that this produces.

TMT was initially developed to answer three fundamental questions about human nature: Why do people need self-esteem? Why do people need to believe that out of the multitude of ways that people construe reality, theirs happens to be the one that is ultimately correct? And why are interpersonal and intercultural relations so frequently ridden with conflict and violence? Becker’s ideas offered potential answers to these and many other questions. TMT was an attempt to simplify Becker’s ideas and integrate them with existing knowledge within the fields of social, personality, developmental, cognitive, and motivational psychology in a way that would generate testable hypotheses about the functions of self-esteem and culture. TMT posited that knowledge of inevitable mortality, when combined with the biologically rooted craving for life, creates a potential for paralyzing terror. To function effectively in the world, people must keep this terror at bay. Protection from this terror is provided by self-esteem and faith in one’s cultural worldview (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). These two psychological entities function to buffer death-related anxiety. Later research revealed close interpersonal relations as an additional component of the anxiety-buffering mechanism (Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003).

TMT posits that awareness of the inevitability of death is a powerful motivating force that influences the human needs for meaning, self-esteem, and close relationships. The precursors of these motives probably initially evolved because they solved practical problems of living that increased our ancestors’ chances of passing on their genes by staying alive, mating, and caring for their offspring. However, once human intelligence had evolved to the point that awareness of death emerged, the need for protection from the fear that this awareness created led people to develop systems of meaning and value that provided protection from this fear. From this point on, people no longer simply needed meaning systems that helped them procure the necessities of life—now, their meaning systems also needed to help manage their potential for existential anxiety. The value of accuracy and practical utility of the meaning systems was usurped by the value of death transcendence, and from this point on the pursuit of truth and protection were often in conflict with each other.

Well over 400 separate studies conducted in over 20 countries have tested and supported hypotheses derived from TMT. These studies helped expand the theory beyond its initial focus and applied it to topics as varied as religion and spirituality, legal decision making, nostalgia, human sexuality, fascination with fame, creativity, materialism, and psychopathology. The fact that existential concerns have been shown to affect human behavior across so many domains suggests that existential anxiety is a central motivating force for the human psyche. In the next sections, we provide an overview of TMT findings that support this claim; however, we first describe the logic of the methods commonly employed in TMT studies.

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MATERIALISM

Materialism, or the importance a person attaches to worldly possessions (Belk, 1985), has frequently been recognized by scholars as a way to secure meaning and transcend death. Irvin Yalom, for example, wrote that accumulating material wealth can become “a way of life which effectively conceals the mortal questions churning below” (1980, p. 121). Others contended that underlying the American ideology of affluence is the pursuit of secular personal immortality through material means (Hirschman, 1990). It has also been suggested that achieving immortality is a significant motivating force for collectors (e.g., Pearce, 1992).

Research inspired by TMT provides empirical support for this general line of thinking. Kasser and Sheldon (2000), for instance, demonstrated that participants primed with mortality thoughts not only reported higher financial expectations for themselves 15 years in the future but also became greedier and less environmentally sensitive in a forest-management simulation. Another study (Mandel & Heine, 1999) revealed that subtle reminders of mortality increase preference for high-status products such as Lexus automobiles or Rolex watches. Rindfleisch, Burroughs, and Wong (2009) similarly showed that the strong connections materialistic individuals form with their brands serve to buffer against existential insecurity. These and other parallel findings suggest that people often seek protection from existential anxiety in the sense of value and self-esteem provided by material objects.

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Human beings require meaning, both to navigate through the mundane tasks of daily life and to imbue their lives with purpose and transcendent value (Frankl, 1963). To live without meaning, values, or ideals is distressing (Yalom, 1980), and many people are willing to live and die for their ideals and values. TMT posits that believing that things are as they are supposed to be—that the mundane ways of life make sense, and that human existence fits into some overall meaningful pattern—provides the coherence, structure, and security that protect people against death anxiety. Indeed, cultural worldviews and personal relationships can succeed as existential anxiety buffers only to the extent they provide the individual with this sense of meaning.

Supporting the notion that maintaining a meaningful view of reality is essential for protection against existential anxiety, research finds, for example, that reminders of mortality increase distaste for apparently meaningless art, particularly among those who dispositionally prefer unambiguous knowledge (Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006). Similarly, Vess, Routledge, Landau, and Arndt (2009) documented that death reminders bolster perceptions of life’s meaning among participants with a high personal need for structure—those who are inclined to prefer simple and unambiguous interpretations of reality. Furthermore, death thoughts are found to lead people to imbue everyday actions with more meaning and to judge their current actions to be more meaningfully connected to their long-term goals (Landau, Kosloff, & Schmeichel, 2010). The desire to see the world as a just and orderly place (Lerner, 1980) can also be considered a manifestation of the fundamental need for meaning, structure, and comprehensibility. In line with this, Landau and colleagues (2004) found that for participants high in need for structure, reminders of mortality increased preference for narratives that suggest a just world and a benevolent causal order of events in the social world (see also Hirschberger, 2006).

This body of research, taken together, suggests that thoughts of death intensify the desire to see the world as a meaningful, structured, and ordered place, particularly for people who are predisposed to simpler interpretations of reality. Mortality thoughts also seem to intensify the need to find meaning on a larger scale, a so-called cosmic meaning—the sense that “life in general or at least human life fits into some overall coherent pattern” (Yalom, 1980, p. 423). In Becker’s words, “man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level” (1973, p. 196). The belief that there is some superordinate design to life and that each individual has some particular role to play in this design can thus be an extraordinary source of existential comfort.

Historically, religions have been the major sources of cosmic meaning, and despite the increase in popularity of atheistic worldviews (e.g., Dawkins, 2006; Harris, 2004; Hitchens, 2007), this is true for the vast majority of people today as well. Religions, typically, offer a comprehensive meaning schema, according to which the world and human life are part of a divinely ordained plan. This plan includes stories about the origin of the universe, clear moral guidelines, and theodicies that help people explain and endure suffering—all of which make the inevitability of death easier to handle. American historian and philosopher Will Durant talked about the “eternal hunger of mankind for supernatural consolations” (1932, p. 36), and TMT argues that this hunger stems largely from existential anxieties, and particularly the need to deal with the overwhelming reality of death (for a comprehensive review of the terror management function of religion, see Vail et al., 2010).

Religions, unlike any other institutions, are capable of promising literal immortality to their believers—in the form of heaven, reincarnation, or some other form of afterlife—which can be a powerful tool in mollifying death anxiety. Research shows, for example, that among those who believe in an afterlife, reminders of death increase this belief (Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973). Further support for the anxiety-buffering effects of belief in afterlife is provided by Dechesne and colleagues (2003), who found that exposure to scientific-looking evidence about the existence of life after death eliminates the typical increased worldview defense and striving for self-esteem that is produced by death primes. Mortality reminders have also been demonstrated to intensify faith in supernatural agents. Norenzayan and Hansen (2006) found that after the activation of death thoughts, North Americans, particularly those who were religiously affiliated, displayed stronger belief in God and divine intervention, even showing greater belief in spiritual entities associated with religious faiths other than their own.

Research also suggests that different orientations to religious faith have different psychological consequences. Whereas a fundamentalist orientation has been shown to be associated with a variety of socially undesirable tendencies, an intrinsic orientation appears to be especially effective in managing death-related fears. Religious fundamentalism refers to the belief that there is one absolute truth and that all other belief systems are wrong and evil. A large body of research has found religious fundamentalism to be positively associated with racial prejudice (e.g., Altemeyer, 2003; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992; Laythe, Finkel, & Kirkpatrick, 2001), religious ethnocentrism (Altemeyer, 2003), and support for militarism (e.g., Henderson-King, Henderson-King, Bolea, Koches, & Kauffman, 2004; Nelson & Milburn, 1999). These attitudes are mediated by the absolutist authoritarian structure of the fundamentalist’s belief system (Laythe et al., 2001). A rigid black-and-white orientation to truth is likely to make beliefs that deviate from one’s own especially threatening and thus encourage more vigorous attempts to assert the correctness of those beliefs—derogation of and violence toward those with different beliefs are ways of bolstering confidence in the veracity of one’s own beliefs.

Intrinsic religious orientation, on the other hand, seems to have more benefits and few costs. Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993) report that intrinsic religious beliefs are associated with lessened death anxiety and heightened existential well-being. Research also shows that people high in intrinsic religiousness do not engage in some forms of worldview defense after reminders of mortality, and experience lessened death-thought accessibility following mortality salience if they are given a chance to affirm their religious beliefs (Jonas & Fischer, 2006).

Becker (1973) notes the distinctive human need “to spiritualize human life, to lift it onto a special immortal plane, beyond the cycles of life and death that characterize all other organisms” (p. 231). While religions can effectively address this need for some people, others prefer less clearly structured forms of spirituality. Spirituality can be defined as a “personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life, about meaning, and about relationship to the sacred or transcendent” (Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001, p. 18). The idea of the sacred is considered to be the distinctive core of spirituality (e.g., Pargament, 1999), and it has been frequently proposed that people fervently desire to live in a “sacralized cosmos” (Eliade, 1959). By providing a sense of transcendence, boundlessness, ultimate value and purpose, the sacred can alleviate the pain accompanying one’s awareness of creatureliness, powerlessness, and ultimate finitude. Supporting this notion, studies show that construing different aspects of the world (e.g., nature, children, music) in sacred terms can protect the individual against death anxiety and its possibly destructive effects such as outgroup hostility and materialism (Kesebir, Chiu, & Pyszczynski, unpublished data).

The human predilection for a sacred, magical, divinely inspired view of reality can also manifest itself in the affection for charismatic leaders, for hero worshipping, and the fascination with celebrities. The word charisma, for example, originates from a Greek word meaning “divine gift,” or “talent from God,” and studies find that reminders of death intensify preference and support for charismatic leaders who proclaim the superiority of one’s ingroup (Cohen, Solomon, Maxfield, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2004). Cultural heroes, as well as famous people who represent individually and collectively held values, tend to be perceived as symbolically and literally immortal, which might help their admirers to transcend death and insignificance by proxy. In support of the existential function of famous people, Kesebir, Chiu, and Kim (unpublished data) demonstrated that after mortality reminders, participants expect famous people to be remembered for a longer time in the future, and this effect is qualified by how much the famous people represent cultural values. Similarly, the more a famous person was perceived to represent her culture’s values, the less likely people thought that a plane she boarded would crash. These findings suggest that charismatic, heroic, or famous people might occupy a demigod status in the eyes of their fans, and in so doing provide them with meaning and existential stamina.

In this section, we have argued that humans harbor a potent need for an all-encompassing sense of meaning, an underlying reality that transcends everyday life, and a sacralized, magical cosmos—a need that is, at least partially, driven by existential concerns. This concludes our discussion of how existential motivation influences the human experience on the four dimensions of living. Our review suggests that on all the four dimensions—the physical, social, psychological, and spiritual—knowledge of one’s mortality and accompanying existential concerns intensify people’s striving for special meaning, value, and security. An inevitable fate of nonexistence, a realization that “our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness” (Nabokov, 1999, p. 9), is extremely difficult to accept, which renders the quest for assurances of invulnerability a primary human motive. As we have seen, a broad array of human behaviors—from self-esteem striving to outgroup derogation, from materialism to spirituality—serve to provide protection against existential dread. The breadth and depth of phenomena that have been subjected to research by TMT and shown to be affected by existential concerns testifies to the prominent role that existential motivation plays in human life. There remains, however, one last behavioral tendency that can be induced by existential motivation we have not yet explored.

The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation

OXFORD