6 Terror Management Theory
Greenberg, Pyszczynsky, & Solomon (1986)
During the pre-reading exercise, I asked you to think of something that you’ve always wanted to do but have not done and then rate how motivated you were to do it. I then had you read a quote that reminded you of your mortality and asked you the same question. Do you expect motivation to be higher before reading the quote or after reading the quote? Chances are, motivation will be higher after having been reminded of our mortality. Why is that?
Authors have been writing about death for centuries, as illustrated by Marcus Aurelius’ (who lived from 121 – 180) quote I used in the pre-reading exercise. Indeed, death seems to hold a special fascination in the human psyche. It might hold such a fascination because, unlike other animals, we know, one day, that we are going to die.
| “…we are the highest form of life on earth and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die…” (De Lillo, 1985, p. 99). |
| “Primitive man developed language. We reflected on our own existence. We became aware of ourselves as creatures with a past and a future, individual and collective histories. We developed culture…but there’s a downside to self-consciousness. We know that we’re going to die. Imagine what a terrible shock it was to Neanderthal Man, or Cro-Magnon Man, or whoever it was that first clocked the dreadful truth: that one day he would be meat. Lions and tigers don’t know that. Apes don’t know it. We do.” (Lodge, 2002, p.102) |
Greenberg and colleagues (1986) contend that this knowledge of our mortality significantly influences behaviour. The knowledge that we are going to die results in terror. How do we deal with this existential terror? Simply, we try and achieve immortality. Two processes help us deal with our own mortality:
| First, we develop cultural worldviews. These are humanly created and transmitted beliefs about the nature of reality shared by groups and individuals. These cultural worldviews that we ascribe to provide symbolic (and sometimes literal) immortality as the cultural worldview will continue to exist once we cease to by instilling a sense of stability and permanence. |  |
These cultural worldviews give rise ot the second process that helps us cope: self-esteem. We want to be a valuable member of a meaningful universe, and cultural worldviews provide the standards that allow us to measure ourselves against to ascertain our self-esteem. Together, cultural world views and self-esteem buffers against our existential anxiety caused by our immortality.
Terror management theory predicts that we value ingroup members favourably because they ascribe to similar cultural world-views, thus validating them. Outgroupers, on the other hand, hold different cultural world views, which threaten the validity of the ingroups’. Research demonstrates that being reminded of our mortality leads to stronger prejudicial reactions to individuals who challenge our cultural worldviews (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990; Rosenblatt et al., 1989)
It is interesting looking at how TMT and COVID interact. Faulkner, Schaller, Park, and Duncan (2004; all UBC alumni) show that the more people feel vulnerable to disease, the more negative their reactions and attitudes are to foreigners. So, during times of COVID, I would predict that individuals processing immigration applications (which reminds me, I need to submit mine!) are more likely to scrutinize and maybe be slightly harsher in who they allow into their country. We can see in some instances, COVID has been used to push anti-immigration policies.
