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Terror Management Theory
ALISABETH AYARS, URI LIFSHIN, and JEFF GREENBERG
Abstract
Terror management theory (TMT), based on the works of Ernest Becker, asserts
that the fear of death contributes to many aspects of human thought and behavior.
According to TMT, people use self-esteem and cultural worldviews to buffer
awareness of death. In this short review paper we review fundamental research
in TMT, including the findings that after being reminded of death people bolster
their cultural worldviews and strive for self-esteem. Cutting-edge research in TMT,
including research on intergroup conflict, psychological disorders, religious beliefs,
and brain imaging, is discussed. Finally, we review key issues in TMT research
going forward.
INTRODUCTION
Terror management theory (TMT) is based on the writings of Ernest
Becker (1971, 1973), a cultural anthropologist whose works on human
nature transcended any single discipline. According to Becker, humans
are truly extraordinary animals; they have the intellectual capacity and
self-consciousness to imagine the far reaches of the cosmos, ponder the
mysteries of existence, and simulate events far off into the future or past.
However, the unique human capacity for self-awareness and temporal
thinking comes at a price, for humans are also able to recognize their own
vulnerability, including the fact that they will one day die.
Becker theorized that humans deal with the problem of death by constructing elaborate meaning systems, or cultural worldviews to provide avenues
for people to feel significant. For one, nearly all cultures offer religious worldviews that not only stipulate a literal afterlife but also bestow humans with
grand significance in a larger cosmic plot. Aside from religion, all cultures
offer ideals of success, beauty, or goodness that, if attained, indicate that one
has achieved importance and value and is worthy of a death-transcending
legacy. The feeling of value—produced by living up to cultural ideals—is
self-esteem.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
TMT, developed by Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon
Solomon (1986), is an empirically supported derivation of Becker’s ideas.
TMT asserts that awareness of mortality has the potential to cause overwhelming terror for humans because it conflicts with a host of biological
systems geared toward averting death and continuing existence. To cope
with death awareness, humans develop and maintain cultural worldviews
that provide benign conceptions of reality as well as standards of value. By
living up to these standards (and thereby attaining self-esteem), humans
feel they are significant contributors to a meaningful universe; important
players in an enduring cosmic plot, rather than transient mortal animals.
The achievement of a place of significance and permanence represents a
symbolic transcendence of death, which is also referred to as symbolic
immortality (e.g., Lifton, 1979).
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Foundational research in TMT focused on two intertwining hypotheses: the
anxiety buffer hypothesis and the mortality salience (MS) hypothesis (for a
recent review, see Greenberg & Arndt, 2012). “The anxiety buffer hypothesis
asserts that if a psychological structure [self-esteem and cultural worldviews]
provides protection against anxiety, then augmenting that structure should
reduce anxiety in response to subsequent threat. The MS hypothesis states
that if a psychological structure provides protection against the potential for
terror engendered by knowledge of mortality, reminding people of their mortality should increase their need for protection provided by that structure”
(Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997, p. 72). Building off these hypothesis, terror management theorists reasoned that if cultural worldviews and
self-esteem serve to reduce anxiety about death, then reminding people of
death should produce increased need to defend their cultural worldviews,
and achieve self-esteem.
In the first test of this hypothesis, Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon,
Pyszczynski, and Lyon (1989) found that thinking about mortality motivates
people to punish those who threaten their worldviews, and reward those
who uphold them. The participants in the first study were municipal judges,
who agreed to participate in a study on personality and bond assessment.
The judges randomly received a questionnaire packet that either included a
MS manipulation or not. In the MS condition, the participants described (i)
what will happen to them as they physically die, and (ii) the emotions that
the thought of their own death arouses in them. The questionnaire packet
also included a case description of an arrested prostitute (who violates
cultural standards) and a form for a bond assessment recommendation.
In accordance with the study’s prediction, judges who were reminded of
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their mortality recommended a much higher bond assessment (M = $455)
compared to those who were not reminded of death (M = $50).
These results have been further supported by hundreds of studies, which
have found that MS inductions compared to control inductions cause participants to give harsher punishments to those who violate the cultural moral
codes, to give more negative evaluations of those who oppose their cultural
worldviews (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990), or to support violent actions toward
people who criticizes their cultural beliefs compared to control inductions.
In one provocative study by McGregor and colleagues (1998), participants
were allowed to allot painful hot sauce to an individual who disparaged their
political views (they were informed that the target did not like spicy food).
Participants who had been reminded of death allocated more hot sauce to the
worldview-threatening confederate.
Importantly, these responses occur after people are reminded of death, but
not other control topics, such as intense pain, meaninglessness, an upcoming
examination, failure, general anxieties, feelings of uncertainty, temporal discontinuity, unexpected events, public speaking, expectancy violations, social
exclusion, and more. Furthermore, TMT researchers have used a variety of
different ways to induce mortality related thoughts including writing one
sentence about death, subliminal priming of death-related words, footage of
death or of destruction, proximity to a funeral home, death words search
puzzles, health or risk warnings, and images or reminders of terrorism.
Along with cultural worldviews, self-esteem also acts as a buffer against
death anxiety. Self-esteem occurs when one lives up to her or his cultural
worldview and therefore gains a sense that she or he has secured the
symbolic or literal immortality the worldview offers. In a series of studies,
Greenberg and colleagues (1992) demonstrated that elevated self-esteem
reduces both self-report anxiety in response to graphic, death-related images
(study 1) and physiological arousal while anticipating painful shocks
(studies 2–3). In a subsequent study by Harmon-Jones and colleagues (1997),
American participants were randomly assigned to receive either bogus
positive feedback or bogus neutral feedback on a personality assessment.
Then, they either wrote about their own death or a neutral topic, and given
the opportunity to evaluate people who praised or criticized the United
States Elevated self-esteem decreased pro-US bias in the MS condition,
indicating that the increase in self-esteem assuages the need to validate
one’s worldview when death is salient. Similarly, individuals with dispositionally high self-esteem do not exhibit worldview defensiveness after being
reminded of death (for a review of TMT and self-esteem see Pyszczynski,
Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004). Subsequent research showed
that when mortality is made salient, individuals strive for self-esteem; for
example, by donating money to charity (e.g., Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, &
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Pyszczynski, 2002). These studies and others provide converging evidence
that self-esteem buffers anxiety about death.
These foundational findings have been greatly expanded and refined. One
crucial advancement was the discovery of the death-thought accessibility
(DTA) concept and the dual-process model of defense (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). TMT theorists were puzzled that although MS
produces defensiveness toward worldview-threatening others presumably
out of concern about death, participants do not self-report anxiety after
being reminded of death. Furthermore, subliminal reminders of death often
produce stronger defensive responses that supraliminal reminders (e.g.,
Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997). If unconscious reminders
of death produce more defense than conscious reminders, something other
than conscious anxiety must be at work. A major breakthrough occurred
when TMT theorists found that worldview defense, rather than being driven
by conscious anxiety, is caused by elevated death-thought accessibility DTA.
DTA refers to the likelihood at a given time that thoughts of death will
appear in consciousness, usually measured by a word stem completion task
(Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, & Faucher, 2010). TM researchers have found that
worldview defense occurs when death thoughts are highly accessible, but
beneath conscious awareness, and that worldview defense reduces DTA
back to normal levels. Furthermore, when individuals’ worldviews or sense
of self-worth is threatened, death thoughts become more accessible.
DTA is initially low after an MS prime, because participants deliberately
suppress death thoughts. However, after a delay in which participants
become distracted from thoughts of death, DTA rises, producing worldview
defense. To distinguish deliberate, rational defenses that occur immediately
after MS (like death-thought suppression) from unconscious, nonrational
defenses (such as worldview defense), TM researchers labeled the former
proximal defenses and the latter distal defenses. This formulation of a
dual-process model of existential defense marked an important point of
progress in the refinement of TMT.
The anxiety buffer hypothesis and the MS hypothesis, along with the
dual-process model of defense, provide the foundation around which
most TMT hypothesis are situated. However, it is important to note two
other foundational lines of research. One of these lines of research has
elucidated the effect of mortality concerns on humans’ relationship with
their own bodies. Building on Becker’s analysis, TM theorists hypothesized
that because the human bodily existence reminds people of their own
vulnerability and mortality (because it is the body that dies and decays),
thoughts about death and thoughts about “creatureliness” (e.g., similarity
to animals), should drive people to disassociate themselves with their body
and with nature (Goldenberg, 2012). This hypothesis was supported by
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studies demonstrating that MS manipulations cause participants to be more
disgusted by bodily products or by animals and to show greater preference
for essays that describe people as distinctively different from animals and to
avoid pleasant physical sensations.
Finally, TMT has produced well-supported findings regarding the effect of
mortality concerns on health behaviors (see Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008, for a
review). When death thoughts are in focal attention, people engage in healthy
behaviors such as intending to get fit and using sunscreen; this is a form
of proximal defense. However, when death thoughts are highly accessible
but unconscious, people’s desire to enhance self-esteem often leads them to
engage in health-negative behaviors. For example, participants who are lead
to believe that tanned skin is attractive exhibit an increase interest in tanning
when death thoughts are accessible but not conscious.
To summarize, the earliest research in TMT focused on (i) the importance
of cultural worldviews in managing concern about death and (ii) the anxiety
buffering function of self-esteem. TMT researchers also discovered that people keep awareness of death at bay using both proximal and distal defenses.
Having found support for these major tenets, the theory went on to illuminate how the physical body can induce concerns about death and how
mortality concerns influence health-related behaviors.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
In the next section we succinctly highlight some of the cutting edge TMT
research in the domains of intergroup conflict, psychological disorders, religious belief, and brain imaging.
INTERGROUP CONFLICT
Early TMT studies revealed that MS can lead to aggression against
worldview-threatening others (McGregor et al., 1998). Recent TMT research
has applied this finding to modern intergroup conflicts. In a recent set
of studies, Cohen, Soenke, Solomon, and Greenberg (2013) found that
death-related thoughts contribute to American participants’ negative
responses to Islamic symbols. In the first study, participants were randomly
assigned to an MS or a control condition and then read a paragraph about
the 2010 debate over the controversy surrounding the building of the new
Cordoba House or the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” (the controversy
concerns its proximity to the world trade center memorial site in New York).
Thinking about mortality caused participants to show less support for the
mosque being built, and to want the mosque built farther away from ground
zero. In addition, these studies found that asking people to think about a
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mosque, but not a church or a synagogue, being built in their neighborhood,
increased the accessibility of death-related thoughts (studies 2–3); this
effect was eliminated when participants read a newspaper account of the
desecration of the Quran (study 4). Greenberg and colleagues (1992) found
that when the value of tolerance was primed, MS did not cause derogation
of a target who criticized the United Studies (study 2). Because MS motivates
adherence to cultural standards and values, it makes sense that MS drives
adherence to peaceful cultural values if those values are salient.
Cutting-edge research has expanded the list of variables that moderate
defensive responding (for a thorough review, see Jonas & Fritsche, 2013).
Pyszczynski et al. (2012) examined the effect of a subordinate goal—solving
global climate change—on desire for peace-making among groups in conflict. They found that when students were focused on a global threat (climate
change) as opposed to a local threat (an earthquake), MS actually increased
support for international peace making (study 1). Furthermore, thinking of
a global climate change as opposed to a local catastrophe caused Muslim
Palestinian Israelis to respond with increases support for peace making with
Israeli Jews, provided they scored high on a measure of perceived common
humanity (which measures the extent to which one perceives all humanity
to be interconnected and espouse the same fundamental hopes and fears).
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
Another line of research has used TMT to understand psychological disorders. For example, TMT has been applied to anxiety disorders such as
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Pyszczynski and Kesebir (2011) theorized that traumatic experiences disrupt the anxiety buffer that normally
functions to reduce concerns about death. For example, experiencing a
threat to one’s existence may dismantle one’s perception that the world is
a benevolent, meaningful place that supports human life. Essentially, one’s
“fundamental relationship with existence” is shattered (Pyszczynski &
Kesebir, 2011). In order to explore the hypothesis that PTSD is characterized
by the disruption of anxiety buffers, Pyszczynski and Kesebir subjected
survivors of the 2005 Zarand earthquake in Iran to reminders of mortality as
well as reminders of the earthquake four weeks after the event. They found
that survivors who had a high level of dissociation—a major predictor of
PTSD, characterized by altered time and space perception and the sense
that the traumatic experience was dream-like or unreal—did not respond
to MS or earthquake with worldview defense, as those with low levels of
dissociation did. Similarly, those who had full-blown PTSD 2 years after the
earthquake did not exhibit normal worldview defense, suggesting that the
cultural worldview anxiety buffer is absent in individuals with PTSD.
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Further support for the connection between terror management processes
and anxiety disorders comes from Kosloff et al. (2006), who showed that MS
led to increased dissociation in response to a short film about the attacks
of 9/11/2001 and that this dissociation tends to increase anxiety sensitivity,
which is a measure of concern over anxious symptoms, assessed with questions such as, “When I notice that my heart is beating rapidly, I worry that I
might have a heart attack.”
Death concerns are implicated in phobias as well. Strachan and colleagues
(2007) found that MS, compared to aversive control manipulations, increased
a variety of phobic responses among those who already possessed the phobias, including compulsive hand washing, arachnophobia, and social phobia.
The authors suggest that such phobias may in fact be a response to death anxiety, misdirected toward more circumscribed concerns (Strachan et al., 2007).
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Another cutting-edge research program has focused on the psychological
functions of religious beliefs (for reviews see Soenke, Landau, & Greenberg,
2013; Vail et al., 2010). According to TMT, religions serve a fundamental function in managing death-related concerns, by granting followers a clear sense
of meaning, purpose, and a way of achieving literal immortality. Although
initial TM research focused on the role that religious beliefs play for people
who define themselves as religious (e.g., Soenke et al., 2013) a recent study by
Heflick and Goldenberg (2012) suggests that supernatural beliefs could also
help atheists manage death-related concerns. In this provocative study, atheist, agnostic, and religious Americans read an article that either confirmed or
disconfirmed the existence of an afterlife, and then were randomly assigned
to either a MS or a control manipulation. Afterwards, the participants rated
worldview-threatening and worldview-affirming essays. Evidence for the
existence of an afterlife reduced defensive MS responses regardless of the
participants’ beliefs, suggesting that even atheists are capable of using (at
least some forms of) afterlife belief to buffer death anxiety. However, a study
by Vail, Arndt, and Abdollahi (2012) found no effect of MS on atheists’
explicit endorsement of afterlife beliefs.
BRAIN IMAGING
Very recent research has explored the effects of MS primes on neural functioning. Han, Qin, and Ma (2010, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the brain regions associated with perceptions of
death-related words in a Stroop-like task, finding that death-related words
were associated with decreased activity in the insula. Quirin and colleagues
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(2011) found that answering questions about death, as opposed to pain, was
associated with activation of brain areas associated with the experience of or
potential for anxiety.
Henry, Bartholow, and Arndt (2009) examined event-related potentials
(ERPs) as white participants viewed pictures of black or white faces after
being reminded of death (vs control). The results indicated that MS increased
amplitude of the N2 and latency of the P3 components of the ERP to pictures
of angry in-group (white) faces. This finding might be indicative of people’s
greater desire for affiliative interactions with the in-group after MS.
Klackl, Jonas, and Kronbichler (2013) examined the neural correlates
of proximal defenses to MS. They found that participants’ responses to
death-related words were associated with a larger late positive potential
(LPP) (400–800 ms after stimuli), compared to their responses to words that
were either neutral or negative in valence. Considering previous studies on
the LPP ERPs (e.g., Schupp et al., 2000), this suggests that individuals were
particularly motivated to attend to and process death words. In a second
study, a similar effect was found for positive words. The authors suggest
that increased attention to positive words may be indicative of proximal
defense (i.e., a means of distracting oneself from death words also present in
the task).
Because research on the neural correlates of TM processes is young, at this
point it is too early to interpret these findings confidently. However, brain
studies prove a promising area of research that may shed light on underlying
TM processes.
ADDITIONAL MODERATORS
TMT research has also focused on additional moderators of MS-related
responses and death thought accessibility. For example, mindfulness—the
tendency to focus on the present moment—has been shown to moderate
responses to death reminders. In a series of studies, Neimiec and colleagues
(2010) found that individuals high in trait mindfulness (measured as low
mindlessness) exhibit decreased responses to MS on a variety of measures.
Further investigation of this effect (studies 6 and 7) revealed that mindful
individuals suppressed death thoughts less after MS and responded to
MS prompts with longer than average responses, suggesting that mindful
individuals inhibit proximal defenses (thus allowing death thoughts to
remain conscious), obviating the need for distal defense (which occurs when
death thoughts are active but unconscious). Another recently explored
moderator of MS is nostalgia (Routledge, Arndt, Sedikides, & Wildschut,
2008); this work suggests that thinking about one’s past as significant can
serve a terror management function.
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KEY ISSUES IN FUTURE RESEARCH
In the following section, we summarize key issues that have emerged in TMT
research and will likely be the subject of further exploration.
DEEP VERSUS SHALLOW DEATH CONSTRUALS
When people think about death deeply (i.e., via writing about it for a long
period time), defensiveness is mitigated or does not emerge (Greenberg,
Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994). It is possible that deeper
death construals simply prevent distal defenses, such as worldview bolstering, from occurring, because death thoughts are not suppressed after
deep construal (either because the motivation to do so is eliminated, or
time or other constraints prevent suppression in the experiments). However, Cozzolino (2006) has proposed a “dual-defense” system of terror
management defense. Cozzolino asserts that reminders of mortality may
be dealt with by an abstract or concrete existential system. According to
Cozzolino, TMT experiments usually activate the abstract existential system,
because reminders of mortality are subtle and impersonal; processing death
abstractly leads to defensive responding. When individuals reflect deeply
on death, processing of death thoughts occurs in a concrete personal system,
leading to growth-oriented rather than defensive responses. Cozzolino notes
that individuals diagnosed with a terminal illness probably process death
in the concrete system, explaining why these individuals often experience
personal growth in light of their illness. Indeed, it remains to be settled how
growth-oriented and accepting responses to death may be incorporated into
the TMT framework.
TMT AND AGING
In a similar vein, many aging individuals, who are closest to death, often
do not respond to MS with worldview defense. The effect of MS on worldview defense for aging individuals is moderated by executive function, with
adults high in executive function exhibiting increased tolerance after MS and
adults low in executive functioning exhibiting normal defensive responding
(Maxfield, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Pepm, & Davis, 2011). Currently, TMT
researchers are investigating the role that executive function might have on
reducing defensive responding in older adults. One potential explanation
for this finding is that individuals with high executive functioning construe
death more concretely, thus fostering more connections between death and
the self, leading to more acceptance of death.
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ALTERNATIVE FRAMEWORKS
TMT has been the subject of much controversy over the years. Alternative
theories have been proposed to explain the effects of MS, and perhaps supplant TMT, such as uncertainty management theory (van den Bos, Poortvliet,
Maas, Miedema, & van den Ham, 2005), the Meaning Maintenance Model
(Proulx & Heine, 2006), Coalitional Psychology (Navarrete & Fessler, 2005),
and most recently, an unconscious vigilance model proposed by Holbrook,
Sousa, and Hahn-Holbrook (2011). The general tenor of these models is that
MS may be one of a number of general threats, such as threats to certainty,
control, or meaning that arouse vigilance or increased reliance on one’s cultural worldview. Cultural worldviews may indeed serve to address other
threats besides mortality. However, terror management theorists (e.g., Greenberg & Arndt, 2012; Landau, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2007) have
argued that death is a unique threat because it is the only inevitable future
event, it runs counter to many biological systems oriented toward continued survival, and it threatens to eliminate all human desires, whether for
belonging, control, competence, or meaning. They have also argued that the
alternative theories cannot account for substantial lines of evidence supporting TMT. Among these are evidence that MS has been shown: in many studies
to have different effects than other threats; to sometimes reverse rather than
simply amplify control condition preferences; to often have very different
effects immediately than it does after a delay; to activate a different time
course of defense than other threats (Martens, Burke, Schimel, & Faucher,
2011); and to have very specific influences on how people respond to their
body, to animals, and to health choices. In addition, well over 80 studies have
specifically linked MS effects to the accessibility of death-related thought
(Hayes et al., 2010). A challenge for future research is to clarify the interrelations among threat of mortality and other sources of psychological insecurity.
SUMMARY
TMT has been, and will continue to be, a fruitful area of study. It has helped
inspire a new subfield known as experimental existential psychology. Foundational work on TMT supported the anxiety buffer and MS hypotheses as
well as the dual defense model. Foundational TMT research also includes
the interplay between death concerns, bodily awareness, and health behaviors. Cutting-edge research has explored intergroup conflict, psychological
disorders, religious belief, neural correlates of TM processes, mindfulness,
and more. Key issues for TMT include puzzling moderators of MS including
deep death construals and old age, as well how death relates to other existential concerns. TMT will continue to shed light on how awareness of mortality
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effects human behavior as it moves into the future with innovative research
designs and addresses increasingly deep and provocative questions.
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ALISABETH AYARS SHORT BIOGAPHY
Alisabeth Ayars is a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona, studying
under the guidance of Dr. Jeff Greenberg. She attended undergraduate at
New College of Florida. Her research interests are existential psychology and
moral psychology, as well as experimental philosophy.
URI LIFSHIN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Uri Lifshin was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel, and finished his BA degree
in psychology at the Inter Disciplinary Center Herzliya. He also is a PhD
candidate at the University of Arizona, studying under Dr. Greenberg’s guidance. His research is primarily focused on terror management theory.
JEFF GREENBERG SHORT BIOGRAHY
Jeff Greenberg is Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. He
has published many papers on self-esteem, prejudice, and intergroup conflict. He developed terror management theory in collaboration with Sheldon
Solomon and Tom Pyszczynski.
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