Terror Management Theory (TMT)
- 1. TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY By Bilal
- 2. BACKGROUND Based on the ideas presented in “The Denial of Death” by Ernst Becker Why does human society develop the way it does? Why is the nature of human society so violent? Why is there intolerance among social groups?
- 3. THE EXPLANATORY PRINCIPLE • What is the explanatory principle for understanding human behavior and culture? • Fear of Death • The most basic drive in individual behavior: The Denial of Death • The role of culture in the denial of death: Immortality Systems
- 4. CONSEQUENCES OF CULTURAL STRUCTURES • Culture gives us a sense of certainty about our reality being invulnerable • Development of an unreal sense of self • Immortality systems: • Manichean morality; Defense of one immortality system against exposure to another • Fear of Life: stems from freedom to define one’s existence
- 5. EMERGENCE OF TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY • Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski (mid-1980s) • Tested Becker’s ideas and developed a scientific theory • Testable Hypothesis based on Becker’s ideas • Self-esteem and Cultural Worldviews
- 6. CULTURAL WORLDVIEW • Man: the Cultural Animal • Helps in developing institutions, norms, and customs • As a result, becomes prevalent in a group of similar people • Essential aspect: Promise of immortality • TMT: Defensive psychological system to deal with death terror
- 7. SELF- ESTEEM Self-esteem as a Cultural Anxiety-Buffer • Why is self-esteem required? • Humans want to be seen as worthwhile and valuable • Early life self-esteem needs met by caregivers • Later, the task is shifted to cultural symbols and authorities • Any threat to self-esteem is a source of anxiety
- 8. COMPONENTS OF SELF-ESTEEM Two Components 1. Belief in the meaningfulness, and importance of culture 2. Belief in the significance of one’s own role in the culture
- 9. CONTINUED Minimization of threats • General maintenance (reaffirmation of values, socialization, cultural symbols). Sustains Faith • Defensive strategies (against threats to cultural worldview) • Committed outgroup makes us question our conception of reality • Interpersonal level: dislike and reject individuals with dissimilar attitude
- 10. THREE CRITICAL HYPOTHESES • The Mortality Salience (MS) Hypothesis • The Death-Thought Accessibility (DTA) Hypothesis • The Anxiety-Buffer Hypothesis
- 11. MORTALITY SALIENCE • Mortality Salience is the awareness by individuals that their death is inevitable. • Reminding individuals of their mortality causes them to exhibit higher levels of worldview defense and to pursue activities that have the potential to increase their self-esteem • If cultural worldviews and self-esteem function to reduce concerns about death, then reminding people of death should increase their need for these protective psychological structures.
- 12. CONTINUED Mortality Salience • Increases Defense of the Cultural Worldview (Rosenblatt et al., 1989) • Motivates Prejudice and Aggression (against out-group) (Greenberg et al.,1990, 2001) • Can Inspire Socially Constructive Behaviors (towards ingroup and outgroup) (Greenberg et al., 1992; Jonas et al., 2008) • Increases Striving for Self-Esteem (Kasser & Sheldon, 2000; Peters et al., 2005)
- 13. DEATH THOUGHT ACCESSIBILITY • Threatening or weakening cultural worldviews and self- esteem should increase the accessibility of death-thoughts. • Measured using a word-fragment completion task in which some words are designed to be completed as a death- related word or a nondeath-related word • For example, the fragment, “S K _ L L” could be completed as “SKULL” or “SKILL.” The more death words people complete, the more it can be inferred that death-thoughts are close to consciousness.
- 14. CONTINUED DTA is temporarily increased following threats to • the cultural worldview, (Schimel et al., 2007) • people’s bases for self-esteem, (Ogilvie et al., 2008) • significant relationships, (Hart et al., 2005; Mikulincer et al., 2003) • the human-animal boundary (Goldenberg et al., 2000) • structured meaning (Landau et al., 2004; Roylance et al., 2014)
- 15. THE ANXIETY-BUFFER HYPOTHESIS • Provides explanation for how the need for self-esteem developed and what psychological function it ultimately serves. • According to TMT people need self-esteem because it shields them from anxiety. • Self-esteem buffers anxiety because it is a symbolic extension of the more basic attachment mechanism. • It functions to buffer individuals from (1) the general experience of anxiety (2) thoughts and concerns about death
- 16. CONTINUED Individuals with high self-esteem • Show lower levels of anxiety in response to threats (Greenberg, et al., 1992) • Are less likely to exhibit worldview defense in response to death reminders (Harmon-Jones et al. , 1997, Study 1) • Have lower DTA in response to MS and self-esteem threats (Harmon-Jones et al., 1997; Hayes et al., 2008)
- 17. IMPLICATIONS • Inability to maintain self in a culture might result in mental health issues • Mortality Salience and Prejudice/Stereotyping • Focus on death is counter-intuitive • Understanding of inter-group conflict and strategies for resolution
- 18. TERROR MANAGEMENT HEALTH MODEL • Integrates TMT with Health Psychology • In the context of health decisions, death salience results in health-oriented responses • If mortality activated outside conscious awareness, health decisions are expected to be self-oriented
- 19. TANNING Thompson et al., 2016 • Failing to take protective measures (Sunblock) • Participants chose sunblock when concerns about death were conscious • Delay-task after death-reminder resulted in less interest in buying sunblock • Follow-up study: Tanning and Cultural beauty standard
- 20. TM AND TERRORISM: HOW TERRORISM CHANGES US • Why do terrorists take the lives of innocent people? • Do terrorists actually achieve their goal? Most of us are living our lives relatively normally, • Why? • Our Cultural Defense mechanisms assert themselves
- 21. THE DARK SIDE Death reminder causes people tend to cling to their own beliefs and cultures and to denigrate individuals with different beliefs and cultures. • Greater political and societal divisions • Prejudice • Suspicion between people of different cultures. All of this unconsciously
- 22. CRITICISM • Leary et al., 1997 • Logical difficulties. How does terror management processes increase organism's chances of survival • It can’t be concluded that perceived severity of threats will result in efforts to minimize threats • TM would reduce organism’s chance of survival as anxiety has survival value
- 23. CONTINUED • Questions over support for buffering role of self-esteem • Foundational studies on which TMT is based have failed to replicate • Overall, stimulated cross-discipline research
Editor's Notes
- #3: Ernst Becker, a cultural anthropologist. March 6 1974 death, 49 What makes people act the way they do?
- #4: Fear of Death, the primary motivation in human behavior. To escape from the terrible realization of mortality humans devise strategies: denial of death What is death? What meaning does it hold for us?
- #5: We identify with immortality system and ascribe permanent and absolute truth providing us with a sense of righteousness Intellectuals abhor religion, religion tortures heretics Fear of life stems from its subjective nature and hence personal responsibility and absence of foundation for living a meaningful life
- #6: Of human social behavior We deal with fear of death by developing psychological defense systems which keep the thoughts and concerns about death away from consciousness
- #7: Worldview: Individual’s conception of world and explanation of life. Influence on life values and actions
- #8: Eliminate threat to sustain faith in culture and self esteem The child learns that, to minimize terror, he or she must believe he or she is valuable and deserving within the context of the culture to which he or she subscribes; thus, for the adult human, self-esteem is a cultural-anxiety buffer.
- #9: Negative attitude towards outgroup as an attempt to defuse threat we feel by their existence Symbols: going to mosque, anthems, news, fashion). Defensive strategies: especially if outgroup is committed
- #15: a, Hayes et al. (2015; Study 1) found that threatening the viability of a scientific explanation of the origins of life (i.e., evolution) increased DTA among a sample of atheists. Bible inconsistency: dta TMT maintains that people may become motivated to engage more extreme forms of defense. One such option, termed annihilation, involves killing or mobilizing group-based efforts to destroy the threatening enemy.
- #19: Self-oriented decisions’ beneficiality is moderated by relevance of behavior for individual’s cultural worldview and self-esteem and not his/her continued or improved health
- #20: Positive responses towards salon of death primed group
- #24: the framework continues to resonate for many.