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Abstract
Terror management theory posits that human awareness of the inevitability of death
exerts a profound influence on diverse aspects of human thought, emotion, motivation,
and behavior. People manage the potential for anxiety that results from this awareness
by maintaining: (1) faith in the absolute validity of their cultural worldviews and (2) selfesteem by living up to the standards of value that are part of their worldviews. In this
chapter, we take stock of the past 30 years of research and conceptual development
inspired by this theory. After a brief review of evidence supporting the theory's fundamental propositions, we discuss extensions of the theory to shed light on: (1) the psychological mechanisms through which thoughts of death affect subsequent thought
and behavior; (2) how the anxiety-buffering systems develop over childhood and
beyond; (3) how awareness of death influenced the evolution of mind, culture, morality,
and religion; (4) how death concerns lead people to distance from their physical bodies
and seek solace in concepts of mind and spirit; and (5) the role of death concerns in
maladaptive and pathological behavior. We also consider various criticisms of the theory
and alternative conceptualizations that have been proposed. We conclude with a discussion of what we view as the most pressing issues for further research and theory
development that have been inspired by the theory's first 30 years.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ... of the tree of the knowledge
... thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die... And when the woman saw that the tree was ... to be desired to make one
wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband
with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked ... And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast ... eaten of
the tree ... cursed is the ground for thy sake; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Genesis Chapters 2 and 3, King James Version
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and ... the dead were
judged ... according to their works ... And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes; and there shall be no more death...
Revelation 20 and 21, King James Version
s0005 1. INTRODUCTION: PURPOSE AND GOALS OF THE
THEORY
p0010 Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, &
Solomon, 1986; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991, 2015) was
2 Tom Pyszczynski et al.
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originally developed 30 years ago to address three broad questions about the
roots of human motivation and behavior: (1) Why do people need selfesteem? (2) Why do people need to believe that out of all the possible ways
of understanding the world, theirs is the one that happens to be correct? (3)
Why do people who are different from each other have such a hard time
peacefully coexisting? Back then, the three of us had recently finished our
graduate studies in experimental social psychology and were beginning to
settle into academic positions. Social cognition was flourishing, as many psychologists attempted to explain virtually all human behavior in terms of the
workings (and sometimes mis-workings) of an information processing system; computers as a metaphor for the functioning of the human mind dominated the field. Emotions and motives, when they were discussed, were
viewed as particular types of information deployed by cognitive systems
to guide behavior. Indeed, it was not unusual to engage in discussions with
respected proponents of this approach who, while acknowledging that cognitive analyses had not yet reached the point where they could provide comprehensive explanations for all behavior, argued that eventually such
information processing perspectives would eliminate the need for motivational and emotional constructs in psychological theorizing.
p0015 While intrigued by many of the new ideas and methods that came out of
the purely cognitive approach, we also felt that some important things were
missing from the social psychological discourse in the early 1980s.1 For
starters, the field consisted almost exclusively of a plethora of mini-theories
focused on explicating the concrete details of psychological processes rather
than tackling broad questions about why people behave the way they do. It
seemed to us that social psychologists were more devoted to explaining
the findings of laboratory experiments than elucidating the real world phenomena that these experiments were purportedly designed to help us understand (Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Steinberg, 1988). Indeed,
students in our classes bemoaned the lack of central organizing principles
for grasping the long lists of fascinating findings about human behavior that
were cataloged by the textbooks of the day. In addition, social psychology
seemed intellectually isolated, both from other related academic disciplines
and from previous developments in the field of psychology itself. In particular, psychological science had all but outlawed consideration of
1
np0005 Whether our criticisms of the state of social psychology in the early 1980s were reasonable and justified
is a question that is open to debate and obviously a matter of personal and professional opinion. We
discuss these impressions here because they were important to us at the time and played an important
role in what we hoped to accomplish with TMT. Whether these concerns continue to apply to the field
today is another open question that we think worthy of discussion and debate.
Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 3
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psychoanalytic and existential ideas in theory construction and empirical
research. Yet when we first encountered and seriously entertained such ideas
after completing our graduate education, we were stunned by their relevance
to the questions that social psychologists pondered and to the panoply of
pressing problems that plagued people in their daily lives.
p0020 TMT was our attempt to redress some of what we thought was missing
from the field of social psychology at that time. We aimed at producing a
theory focused on basic “why” questions regarding the roots of social motivation and behavior. We sought to bring together ideas, old and new, to
illustrate important insights that could be gleaned from various sources rarely
given much credence within academic psychology. We also hoped to show
that applying state of the art experimental methods to test such ideas would
infuse them with new life by establishing their empirical credibility. We
wanted to develop a theory that was integrative and synthetic; a theory that
would shed light on diverse and superficially disparate human phenomena
that would itself be refined due to engagement with these phenomena
and the conceptual and empirical traditions that surrounded them. Although
we didn’t realize it at the time, TMT was part of an emerging wave of
broader and more integrative theories within social psychology, including
self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1980) and evolutionary psychology (e.g., Buss, 1989). In the Enlightenment tradition, we wanted the theory
to provide insights about the human condition that could be useful for fostering personal growth and social progress; accordingly, we concluded our
first presentation of the theory in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
(Solomon et al., 1991, p. 146) with a section entitled, “Toward an Applied
Experimental Social Psychology.”
p0025 We also wanted to draw attention to the problem of death and the possibility that the uniquely human awareness of this existential certainty might
play an important role in life. We had never encountered even passing reference to existential concerns in the psychological literature of the day. But
given how hard humans (and indeed, all forms of life) usually strive to stay
alive, it seemed extremely unlikely to us that knowledge of the inevitability
of death would not have vital cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consequences. TMT posits that the fear of death lies at the root of some very
important psychological motives. To clarify a common misconception,
though, our view has never been that the fear of death is the only motivational force that drives human behavior; e.g., in our first TMT chapter in
Advances, we noted that “...it is important to acknowledge that this theory
focuses on one particular motive... many other factors, both historical and
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psychological, need to be considered to fully understand the determinants of
any particular human behavior” (Solomon et al., 1991, p. 149). Rather, we
argue that attempts to explain human behavior that ignore this fear neglect
an extremely important aspect of the human condition and are thus fundamentally incomplete. In a related vein, we never claimed that TMT explains
everything that needs to be known about anything; rather, we argue that TMT
sheds important new light on crucial aspects of most of what people think,
feel, and do. For this reason, we designed TMT with an eye toward interfacing with other social psychological theory and research.
p0030 We begin this chapter marking the 30th anniversary of the initial publication of TMT (Greenberg et al., 1986) with this brief overview of the
concerns and goals that fueled the development of the theory as a prelude
to an assessment of the current state of the theory, which is our primary
aim here. How well has the theoretical and empirical work derived from
TMT over the past three decades addressed these concerns and met the goals
we set for it? More importantly, how well does the theory do what theories
are supposed to do? Does TMT provide a useful way of integrating findings
across diverse literatures in social psychology? Does it shed new light on
these issues and direct us to new phenomena not apparent from the perspective of other theories? Does it serve a generative function and suggest novel
directions for both empirical research and conceptual refinement? Does it
suggest potentially useful ways of addressing important individual and societal problems?
p0035 Toward these ends, we start with an overview of the theory and a very
brief review of the empirical evidence for its fundamental propositions. We
then consider a series of distinct conceptual extensions that have emerged
from the theory’s core propositions to interface with other theory and
research to explain: (1) the cognitive and motivational mechanisms through
which awareness of death affects human thought and action; (2) the development of terror management processes and the anxiety-buffering system
over the course of childhood and individual life spans; (3) the evolution
of human mind and culture; (4) how these processes affect the way human
beings relate to their bodies and the rest of the natural world; and (5) the role
that mismanagement of existential terror plays in psychological dysfunction.
We then consider the most important and influential critiques of TMT and
alternative explanations for our research findings. Finally, we close with a
consideration of some of the most important questions that have emerged
from the first 30 years of TMT research that we think are especially important for furthering our understanding of these issues.
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Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 5
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s0010 2. THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF TERROR
MANAGEMENT THEORY
p0040 TMT was initially inspired by Becker (1973), a cultural anthropologist
whose life work centered on integrating and synthesizing what he believed
were the most important ideas and insights afforded by diverse scholarly
traditions focused on understanding human nature. He drew heavily from
psychology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, sociology, anthropology,
and the humanities to propose what he hoped would become a “general
science of man.” Becker was especially influenced by the work of Otto Rank,
Sigmund Freud, Gregory Zilborg, Norman Brown, William James, Erich
Fromm, George Herbert Mead, Robert Jay Lifton, Erving Goffman, Søren
Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche, all thinkers whose ideas have made
essential contributions to understanding human nature, but were generally
viewed as difficult to test empirically and therefore given little attention
within scientific psychology. We were struck, however, by the relevance
of their thinking to the issues that we and other social psychologists were
focused on and to the many social problems that people have faced throughout history that continued to be pressing issues for contemporary society.
Consequently, we thought it would be worthwhile to try to incorporate
these ideas within contemporary social psychological discourse.
p0045 This led to our initial presentation of TMT in a chapter reviewing the
empirical literature on the need for self-esteem and its influence on diverse
aspects of human behavior (Greenberg et al., 1986). In addition to providing
a simple explanation of what self-esteem is, Becker’s work addressed the previously unasked question of why people need self-esteem. Following Becker,
TMT defined self-esteem as the individual’s assessment of the extent to
which he or she was living up to the standards of value associated with
the cultural worldview to which he or she subscribed, and posited that
self-esteem functions to buffer the anxiety that results from awareness of
the inevitability of death.
p0050 Our initial goals for this paper were to: (1) argue that addressing the question of why people need self-esteem is imperative for understanding an
undeniably important aspect of human nature; (2) propose a plausible and
provocative answer to this question; and (3) assert that awareness of the inevitability of death has a profound influence on many aspects of life. We also
hoped to remind fellow social psychologists that there was a long history of
scholarly work in psychology and other disciplines that offered valuable
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insights that ought not be ignored if our discipline is to be a truly cumulative
and progressive enterprise. Moreover, we realized that recent methodological developments within experimental psychology could be deployed to test
hypotheses derived from TMT and other ideas that previous generations of
psychologists had deemed untestable. We also realized that recent developments within the field of social psychology fit well with these ideas and could
shed new light on them that would facilitate their further refinement and
specification. This instigated a program of research and theory development
that has kept us and many others busy over the past 30 years.
s0015 3. FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITIONS OF TERROR
MANAGEMENT THEORY
p0055 Although most psychological perspectives emphasize either the similarities (e.g., evolutionary and behavioral theories) or differences (e.g.,
cognitive and humanistic theories) between human beings and other animals,
TMT focuses on the interplay between these similarities and differences.
Although humankind shares many evolutionary adaptations with other
species, including diverse bodily and motivational systems that ultimately
function to keep us alive, our capacity for symbolic and abstract thought
make us different from all other living entities. Such sophisticated intelligence
is adaptive because it increases behavioral flexibility and helps us solve diverse
challenges; however, it also inevitably makes human beings realize that they
will someday die, and that death can come at any time for any number of
unpredictable and uncontrollable reasons. TMT posits that awareness of
death in an animal designed by natural selection to avoid premature
termination creates the potential for intense primal fear, which we refer to
as terror to underscore its potency and connection to death. This potential
for terror in response to awareness of a basic fact of life would seriously
impede successful goal-directed behavior and perhaps survival itself unless
effectively managed. Although fear in response to proximal threats to survival
has obvious adaptive value in facilitating behavior that averts death, terror in
response to awareness of the long-term inevitability of an inescapable fate is
another matter—and the focal problem addressed by TMT.
p0060 People use the same intellectual abilities that give rise to their awareness
of the inevitability of death to manage their potential for terror with ideas,
beliefs, values, and concepts. Specifically, they invent, absorb, and cling to
cultural worldviews, which are sets of ideas that provide: (1) a theory of reality
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that gives life meaning, purpose, and significance; (2) standards by which
human behavior can be assessed and have value; and (3) the hope of literal
or symbolic immortality to those who believe in and live up to the standards
of their cultural worldview. Literal immortality entails believing that one will
continue to exist after death, usually in a form that transcends the limitations
of the physical bodies we inhabit. It typically reflects the religious aspects of
cultural worldviews, which promise heaven, reincarnation, or the myriad
other types of afterlives that people have aspired to since the earliest days
of our species. Symbolic immortality entails being part of something greater
than oneself that continues to exist after one’s own death and on into eternity. People acquire symbolic immortality by being valued contributors to
the worlds in which they live and leaving reminders that they were here,
such as families, fortunes, monuments, or anything else that persists after they
are gone, whether tangible (e.g., books, pictures, music) or intangible (e.g.,
memories, histories, ideas).
p0065 Qualifying for either literal or symbolic immortality requires that people
maintain faith in their cultural worldviews and live up to the standards of
value that are part of them. Doing so provides the sense that one is a valuable
participant in a meaningful universe, which is the essence of self-esteem.
Uncertainty regarding the validity of one’s worldview or one’s value within
the context of the standards it provides undermines the efficacy of these psychological structures as a shield against existential terror. And because there
are many possible ways of understanding reality and there are rarely objective metrics of how well one is meeting cultural standards, people require
consensual validation of their worldviews and self-esteem from others to
effectively buffer anxiety. Others who share one’s worldview or evaluate
one positively increase this certainty, but others with different worldviews
or who evaluate one negatively decrease this certainty. Consequently, people are motivated to seek consensual validation of their worldviews from
others and avoid or dismiss any disconfirmation of these structures that
may come their way. The power of consensual validation depends on the
value of the others whose worldview and evaluations impinge on us.
Accordingly, people exaggerate the value of those who share their worldview or who provide positive evaluations and denigrate the value of those
with diverging worldviews or who provide negative evaluations.
p0070 Although there are other elements of the theory that address how this
dual component (i.e., cultural worldview and self-esteem) anxiety-buffering
system develops and functions, these are its core propositions. Over the
years, a variety of theoretical modules regarding specific aspects of these
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processes have emerged that we believe elucidate the evolution, development, and functioning of the anxiety-buffering system. We discuss these
developments in a later section of this paper in which we promote the utility
of conceptual interconnectedness across theories. But first we present empirical evidence for the theory’s fundamental propositions. This research provided initial support for the viability of the theory and posed questions that
led to theoretical refinements and the emergence of some of the theoretical
modules to be discussed later.
s0020 4. RESEARCH ON THE FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITIONS
OF TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY
p0075 Our research strategy for assessing the empirical validity of TMT follows the time-honored tradition of logically deducing hypotheses from the
theory and subjecting them to experimental tests. As with most theories, no
single hypothesis captures the entirety of the phenomena that TMT seeks to
explain or the processes it posits. Therefore, we rely on a set of distinct logical deductions from the theory that yield hypotheses that converge on the
core ideas to evaluate the theory’s fit with empirical reality. These “building
block” hypotheses have been combined with each other to yield more complex predictions that further enhance the convergence across distinct deductions from the theory. Although the fundamental propositions of TMT are
relatively simple, they entail claims that involve processes that are involved
in many diverse forms of behavior. Thus, our strategy was to test the hypotheses derived from the theory by applying them to a correspondingly diverse
range of behavioral domains. Support for these hypotheses has been highly
consistent across these domains.
s0025 4.1 Anxiety-Buffer Hypothesis
p0080 One of the most straightforward implications of TMT is that if a psychological structure serves an anxiety-buffering function, then increasing the
strength of that entity should reduce anxiety in threatening situations. When
we embarked on this research, studies had already shown that self-esteem
was negatively correlated with anxiety (for a review, see Greenberg et al.,
1986), threats to self-esteem increase anxiety and negative affect (e.g.,
Burish & Houston, 1979), and defending self-esteem reduces anxiety produced by self-esteem threats (McFarland & Ross, 1982). But TMT posits
that self-esteem is a general anxiety buffer, so the effects of enhancing it
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should extend to threats in other domains unrelated to the one in which selfesteem is damaged. In particular, elevated self-esteem should reduce anxiety
related to thoughts of death.
p0085 In the initial test of the anxiety-buffer hypothesis, Greenberg, Simon,
Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Chatel (1992) randomly assigned participants
to receive positive or neutral feedback on a personality inventory to increase
their self-esteem or leave it unaltered, respectively; manipulation checks
confirmed that it did. They then viewed a video clip of graphic depictions
of death or a neutral film. Whereas neutral self-esteem participants showed a
significant increase in self-reported anxiety in response to the death-related
video, those who received a self-esteem boost did not. A follow-up study
with different manipulations of self-esteem (high scores on a supposed IQ
test) and threat (anticipating painful electric shocks) showed the same effect
on galvanic skin response, a physiological measure of autonomic arousal
associated with anxiety.2 Subsequent studies demonstrated that both manipulated and chronically high levels of self-esteem mitigated defensive reactions to reminders of death (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1993). Taken
together, these studies confirm that self-esteem does indeed buffer anxiety
and that this effect extends beyond self-esteem-related threats.
s0030 4.2 Mortality Salience Hypothesis
p0090 Far and away the most oft-tested implication of TMT is that reminders of
death (mortality salience, MS) should increase one’s need for the protection
provided by one’s worldview, self-esteem, and close attachments and therefore increase one’s commitment to or striving for them. Consequently, MS
is predicted to lead to more positive responses to anyone or anything that
bolsters them and more negative responses to anyone or anything that
threatens them. Support for this hypothesis comes from studies showing that
MS increases motivation to enhance and defend diverse aspects of these
components of the cultural anxiety buffer. A now 5-year-old meta-analytic
review of 277 studies concluded that this is a moderate to strong effect
(r
2
¼0.35) that is among the top 20% of the strongest effects in the field
of social psychology (Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010). This burgeoning
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2
np0010 We used threat of electric shock because of its independence from threat to self-esteem and its compatibility with a procedure that allowed us to measure a physiological indicator of anxiety. But we
should note that although the threat of being shocked may indeed conjure the threat of possible death,
it may also raise a fear of pain. Because our developmental analysis posits self-esteem as a general source
of protection, we consider it an open question whether it is a general anxiety-buffer that extends
beyond direct threats of death and to terror management resources.
10 Tom Pyszczynski et al.
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literature is so large that we can provide only a few illustrative examples here.
MS increases: worldview defense in the form of harsher punishment for
moral transgressors (e.g., Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, &
Lyon, 1989); more positive evaluations of those who praise one’s culture
and more negative evaluations of those who criticize it (e.g., Greenberg
et al., 1990); greater in-group bias (e.g., Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, &
Sacchi, 2002); less aggression toward those who share one’s worldview and
more aggression toward those with worldviews different from one’s own
(e.g., McGregor et al., 1998); greater support for violent solutions to ethnic,
religious, and international conflicts (e.g., Hirschberger & Ein-Dor, 2006;
Pyszczynski, Abdollahi, Solomon, Greenberg, & Weise, 2006); increased
anxiety when handling cultural icons in a disrespectful way (e.g.,
Greenberg, Simon, Porteus, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1995); more positive
evaluations of essays that argue that humans are different from other animals
and more negative evaluations of essays that argue that humans are similar
to other animals (e.g., Goldenberg et al., 2001); and increased preference
for well-structured information and greater dislike for poorly structured
information (e.g., Landau, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2004). MS also increases
self-esteem striving in the form of increased self-serving attributional biases
(e.g., Mikulincer & Florian, 2002); effort and risk taking on activities that
are central to one’s self-esteem (e.g., Taubman-Ben-Ari, Florian, &
Mikulincer, 1999; Peters, Greenberg, Williams, & Schneider, 2005); desire
for fame (e.g., Greenberg, Kosloff, Solomon, Cohen, & Landau, 2010);
preferences for self-esteem enhancing romantic partners (e.g., Kosloff,
Greenberg, Sullivan, & Weise, 2010); and behavior in line with both chronic
and situationally primed standards (e.g., Rothschild, Abdollahi, & Pyszczynski,
2009). MS increases attachment motivation, as indicated by: greater attraction
to romantic partners (e.g., Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2003); greater
willingness to instigate social interactions (e.g., Taubman-Ben-Ari, Findler,
& Mikulincer, 2002); increased desire for intimacy in romantic relationships
(e.g., Mikulincer & Florian, 2000); more positive associations with one’s
parents (e.g., Cox et al., 2008, Studies 4 and 5); greater desire for children
(e.g., Wisman & Goldenberg, 2005); and larger allocation of resources to
maintain contact with attachment figures (e.g., Cox et al., 2008, Study 6).
s0035 4.3 Death Thought Accessibility Hypothesis I
p0095 It also follows from the theory that threats to any component of a person’s
anxiety buffer should increase the accessibility of death-related thoughts.
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Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 11
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Threats to worldviews, self-esteem, and close attachments increase the number of incomplete word stems completed in death-related ways and reduce
latencies for recognizing death-related words but not other negative or neutral words on a linguistic decision task (e.g., Hayes, Schimel, Faucher, &
Williams, 2008). Moreover, the same conditions that increase death thought
accessibility (DTA) also increase defense of one’s worldview and striving for
self-esteem and close attachments (e.g., Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon,
Simon, & Breus, 1994). Defending one’s worldview, bolstering one’s
self-esteem, or thinking about attachment figures decreases DTA
(Harmon-Jones et al., 1997). The DTA literature is also quite substantial
and had reached over 80 studies back in 2010 (see Hayes, Schimel,
Arndt, & Faucher, 2010).
s0040 4.4 Combining the Hypotheses
p0100 Various combinations of these three core hypotheses have also been tested.
For example, affirming one’s self-esteem, worldview, or attachments
eliminates the increase in DTA and defense of other anxiety-buffer components that MS produces in the absence of such affirmation (e.g., Arndt,
Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1997; Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon,
Pyszczynski, & Simon, 1997; Harmon-Jones et al., 1997). Giving participants supposed evidence supporting the existence of an afterlife eliminates
the effect of MS on both worldview defense and self-esteem striving
(Dechesne et al., 2003), and affirming one’s religious faith has similar effects
among those with an intrinsic religious orientation ( Jonas & Fischer, 2006).
This body of research documents the dynamic relation between DTA and
the various components of the anxiety buffer posited by TMT.
s0045 5. TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY AND CONCEPTUAL
INTERCONNECTIONS
p0105 As empirical support for the theory’s fundamental propositions grew
and we examined an expanding array of phenomena from a TMT perspective, important questions arose that took us considerably beyond the core
ideas. What are the finer grained processes through which death-related
thoughts lead people to think, feel, and behave as they do? Considering that
young children are clearly not capable of conceptualizing death, how does
the anxiety-buffering system develop in early childhood and across the life
span? How do death-related anxiety and the mechanisms that manage it
interact with motive systems that produce growth, development, and
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self-expansion? How did awareness of death, which TMT posits as a central
turning point in the evolution of our species, affect the evolution of mind
and culture? How do cultural concepts of mind and soul relate to physical
bodies? What produces variability in the content and effectiveness of the
worldviews and standards of value that people use to manage their anxiety?
What happens when the anxiety-buffering system breaks down? The fact
that the theory led to these and many other questions, along with plausible
and testable potential answers to them, is testament to its generative power.
p0110 These questions led to theoretical refinements, which led to conceptual
interfaces with other theories and research, both within social psychology
and beyond. Although these conceptual refinements were developed with
an eye toward compatibility with both the core propositions of the theory
and knowledge from other domains of psychology and related disciplines,
they each dealt with unique processes and, to some extent, are independent
of each other. We believe that conceptual interconnectedness across theoretical constructions is a useful way of promoting integration across research
domains toward a more complete understanding of human behavior. Conceptual interconnectivity is also likely to increase the generative power of a
theory, in that advances in understanding often come from focusing on the
intersection of differing ideas and phenomena. The ultimate explanatory
power of a theory can be best appreciated by considering the entire explanatory network with which it interfaces.
p0115 Because TMT was initially developed as an attempt to understand
the roots of many of the motives that other theories use as a point of departure
(e.g., self-esteem, meaning, belonging), it was important that it could effectively interface with other theories that addressed these and related phenomena. Over the years, research has been conducted that used TMT to build on
ideas from many other theories, including social identity theory (e.g.,
Castano et al., 2002), cognitive dissonance theory (e.g., Jonas,
Greenberg, & Frey, 2003), optimal distinctiveness theory (e.g., Simon
et al., 1997), objective self-awareness theory (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg,
Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1998), just world theory (e.g.,
Hirschberger, 2006), objectification theory (Goldenberg, McCoy,
Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2000), self-determination theory
(e.g., Vail, Arndt, Motyl, & Pyszczynski, 2012; Vail, Juhl, et al., 2012), ironic
process theory (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, et al., 1997), reactance
theory (e.g., Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2004), attribution theory
(e.g., Mikulincer & Florian, 2002), balance theory (e.g., Landau et al., 2004),
ego depletion theory (e.g., Gailliot, Schmeichel, & Baumeister, 2006), and
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Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 13
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lay epistemology theory (e.g., Dechesne & Kruglanski, 2004). Indeed, even
the staunchest critics of TMT seem to have constructed their alternative
accounts using essential elements of TMT, including the concept of worldview defense and importance of time passing between threat induction and
defense assessment (e.g., McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001; van
den Bos & Miedema, 2000).
p0120 We now turn to a discussion of what we view as the most central
conceptual interfaces that have emerged regarding TMT-related issues.
s0050 5.1 Psychological Mechanisms Through Which Thoughts
of Death Affect Behavior
p0125 Initial tests of terror management hypotheses produced consistently supportive results, showing that boosting self-esteem reduced anxiety and anxietyrelated behavior (Greenberg et al., 1992, 1993) and that reminders of
mortality led to harsher evaluation of moral transgressors (Rosenblatt
et al., 1989), greater in-group bias (Greenberg et al., 1990), and more negative evaluations of those who criticized one’s culture and more positive
evaluations of those who praised it (Greenberg et al., 1990). But soon after
our initial findings were published, German psychologist Randolph
Ochsmann contacted us to report that he was unable to replicate the MS
effect. After consulting about the details of the procedures he was using,
it became apparent that his MS induction was much more intensive than
ours. When he tried the study again with the simpler MS induction we
had been using, he replicated the effects of MS on evaluations of moral transgressors and found that they generalized to other types of transgressions
beyond the effects of evaluations of a prostitute that we had reported
(Ochsmann & Mathy, 1994).
p0130 These observations led us to suspect that, contrary to the usual dose–
response relationship, milder MS inductions might produce stronger effects
than more intensive ones. This was confirmed in a study that directly compared the two open-ended questions about death we had been using with a
more intensive induction in which, after answering our two questions
about death, participants were asked to vividly imagine they were on their
deathbed, with only a few days remaining to live (Greenberg et al., 1994).
Whereas the milder MS induction produced the usual effect on worldview
defense, the more intensive one did not.
p0135 Though initially puzzling, this pattern of results shed a glimmer of light
on some troublesome inconsistencies in results from our own research:
whereas studies conducted by one of us yielded very consistent MS effects,
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those conducted by another did not. Looking more carefully at the details of
these studies, we realized that all of the successful MS effects came from studies in which substantial intervening tasks (filler or affect measures and experimental instructions) were placed between the MS manipulation and the
dependent variable; but when the dependent variable was assessed immediately after the MS manipulation, significant effects were not found. This
raised the possibility that when people are actively contemplating the problem of death, they do not cling to their worldviews—and made us wonder
what else they might be doing to cope with death under such conditions.
This led to studies comparing the immediate and delayed effects of MS,
which showed that worldview defense occurred only when a delay and distraction separated the MS manipulation and assessment of defensive
responses (Greenberg et al., 1994, Studies 2 and 3). But why would a delay
between MS induction and worldview defense assessment be needed for
these effects to emerge—and what were people doing immediately after
being reminded of their mortality?
p0140 These questions led to the development of the dual defense model that
posits distinct defensive tactics for coping with thoughts of death when they
are in current focal attention and when they are on the fringes of
consciousness—highly accessible but not in current focal attention
(Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). We reasoned that when
thoughts of death are in focal attention, people might cope with them in
a seemingly rational manner that “makes sense” and directly addresses the
problem. For example, when consciously thinking about death, people deny
their vulnerability, exaggerate their health and hardiness, or simply suppress
such thoughts. This enables them to convince themselves that death is a
problem for the distant future and of little relevance to them now. We refer
to these as proximal defenses because their content is logically related to the
problem of death and addresses this threat directly.
p0145 Proximal defenses remove death thoughts from focal attention but do
nothing to negate the fact that death is our inevitable fate. The fact that
we will someday die is a bit of declarative knowledge, similar to our address
or phone number—something that rarely occupies conscious attention but
can easily and quickly be brought to mind. Such thoughts linger on the
fringes of consciousness, in a state of high accessibility, always ready to enter
consciousness (Wegner, 1994). People push these implicit thoughts further
away from consciousness with distal defenses that entail viewing themselves as
valuable contributors to a meaningful world; these distal defenses are the
core components of the anxiety-buffering system specified by TMT. They
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Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 15
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prevent death-related thoughts from entering conscious attention by reducing their accessibility before they can reach consciousness.
p0150 The idea that worldview defense and self-esteem striving occur when
thoughts of death are outside of conscious attention explains why people
have little or no awareness of these processes and why many people are able
to honestly say that they rarely think about death. When thoughts of mortality enter consciousness, people push the problem into the distant future by
convincing themselves of their health and hardiness or simply suppressing
such thoughts by seeking distractions (Wegner, 1994). Once these thoughts
are banished from consciousness and people are no longer aware of them, the
suppression is relaxed, which makes it possible for these thoughts to become
more accessible. But they then activate distal defenses to reduce the accessibility of these thoughts and further reduce the likelihood that they will
enter consciousness. The greater the accessibility of death-related thoughts
outside of conscious awareness, the more vigorous the distal defenses. Thus,
proximal and distal defenses work together to keep death thoughts out of
consciousness and keep people unaware of the influence that they exert from
the fringes of consciousness. This, in turn, enables them to maintain an illusion of objectivity and rationality about their thoughts and feelings
(Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987) and be unaware of the role these defensive
processes play in protecting them from the problem of death.
p0155 A large and growing body of evidence supports the dual defense model.
Whereas the distal defenses of clinging to one’s worldview and self-esteem
striving emerge only when there is a delay and distraction separating the
death reminder and assessment of defensive responses, the proximal defenses
of denying one’s vulnerability and suppressing death-related thoughts
emerge immediately after death reminders (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg,
Pyszczynski, et al., 1997; Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, et al., 1997;
Greenberg, Arndt, Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2000). The two exceptions are that distal defenses occur immediately after subliminal death
reminders or if cognitive load is high during the MS induction (Arndt,
Greenberg, Pyszczynski, et al., 1997; Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, et al.,
1997); this provides further evidence that these defenses emerge when
thoughts of death are accessible but not in conscious attention. Research also
shows that threats to one’s worldview, self-esteem, and attachments increase
DTA (for a review, see Hayes et al., 2010). Importantly, stimuli that increase
death thought accessibility increase commitment to one’s worldview and
self-esteem striving, which in turn reduces death thought accessibility to
baseline levels (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, et al., 1997;
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Harmon-Jones et al., 1997). Although we generally avoid assessing both
death thought accessibility and worldview defense in the same study because
of the possibility that the DTA assessment would prime thoughts of death
and thus contaminate control participants, several recent studies have done
this and shown that DTA mediates the relation between MS and worldview
defense (e.g., Das, Bushman, Bezemer, Kerkhof, & Cermeulen, 2009). MS
also increases the accessibility of concepts that are central to one’s worldview
and thus especially useful for defusing the threat of death (Arndt,
Greenberg, & Cook, 2002).
p0160 Support for the dual defense model has been obtained across a diverse
range of applications of TMT, particularly in research inspired by the Terror
Management Theory Health Model (TMTHM; Goldenberg & Arndt,
2008), which posits that people generally respond in health-promoting ways
via proximal defenses immediately after death reminders but in self-esteem
enhancing and cultural worldview bolstering ways via distal defenses after
being distracted from thoughts of death. For example, in one study, participants chose a more protective sunscreen than controls immediately after a
death reminder (presumably to protect themselves from skin cancer), but if
there was a delay after the reminder, people who value a tan as a basis of selfworth chose a less protective one. For a more comprehensive review of the
literatures on the dual defense model and TMTHM, see Goldenberg and
Arndt (2008).
p0165 Recent studies suggest that there may be other ways people cope with
their fear of death in addition to the particular proximal and distal defenses
specified by TMT and the dual process model. DeWall and Baumeister
(2007) showed that reminders of death increase attention to positive affect,
presumably to counteract the anxiety that could otherwise arise; specifically,
MS increased completions of word stems with positively valenced affective
words and marginally decreased completions with negatively valenced affective words. In a related vein, MacDonald and Lipp (2008) found that MS
produced a significant reduction in the attentional bias for fear-relevant
stimuli that was obtained in the absence of MS. Research also suggests that
alcohol and other drugs may sometimes serve a terror management function.
Ein-Dor et al. (2014) showed that a death reminder increased the likelihood
of participants consuming an alcoholic beverage shortly thereafter, and
Chatard and Selimbegovic´ (2011) and Nagar and Rabinovitz (in press)
showed that MS increased cannabis users’ desire to get high and that cannabis
use reduced the accessibility of death-related thoughts. These responses all
seem to fit within the category of proximal defenses that likely divert
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Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 17
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attention from these troubling thoughts. However, they could also be distal
defenses because alcohol and drug consumption can serve as sources of selfworth for some people in certain social contexts. Clearly, these and other
possible ways of coping with thoughts of death merit further exploration.
p0170 Somewhat surprisingly, the MS inductions used in TMT research do not
typically produce measureable signs of anxiety, distress, or negative affect.
When we designed the first MS study, we gave little thought to whether
healthy young adults writing about death in the safety of our labs would
consciously experience fear. On the one hand, fear of death is the central
motivating force in the theory. On the other hand, Becker posited that this
fear is largely unconscious, and people have presumably spent their lives
investing in cultural worldviews and striving for self-esteem to minimize
their experience of that fear. Our first six MS studies showed no hint of
either elevated self-reports of fear or anxiety and no increase in autonomic
or cardiovascular indicators of arousal. Hundreds of studies have subsequently similarly failed to find an impact of MS on self-reported affect
relative to various control conditions; one study (Arndt, Allen, &
Greenberg, 2001) found a small increase in corrugator activity during
subliminal presentation of death primes, but it didn’t persist beyond the
primes, and this activation did not mediate the increased worldview defense
the death primes produced.
p0175 Of course, encounters with death often do produce strong emotional
reactions. Threat of immanent death from disease, violence, or airplane turbulence can quickly generate feelings of terror and palpable signs of physiological arousal. Even healthy people sometimes awaken in the safety of
their bedrooms terrified by dreams or ruminations about their inevitable
fate. The consistent finding that our MS induction did not produce negative
affect but did increase worldview defense and self-esteem striving led us to
posit that these and other relatively subtle death reminders produce a potential
for anxiety or negative affect that is quickly averted by the activation of terror management defenses. This lack of consciously experienced affect in the
many studies demonstrating that MS increased worldview defense was one
of the findings that led us to infer that responses to MS were not simply the
result of negative affect or anxiety that any unpleasant event could produce.
Indeed, in the first of many studies directly comparing the effect of MS with
reminders of other aversive events, we found that whereas thoughts of taking
an important exam or worries about life after college produced significant
increases in negative affect but no increase in worldview defense, thoughts
of death did not increase negative affect but did increase worldview defense;
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this research also found that negative affect in response to MS was associated
with lower rather than higher levels of worldview defense ("0.50;
Greenberg et al., 1995).
p0180 Greenberg et al. (2003) provided more direct evidence for the proposition that it is the potential for anxiety rather than consciously experienced
anxiety that drives MS effects by showing that giving participants a placebo
believed to block the experience of anxiety for an hour eliminated the
MS effect (measured within the hour) obtained in the absence of this
placebo. In other words, if participants didn’t believe they could get anxious,
they had no need to bolster faith in their worldview in response to MS.
If actual arousal or anxiety was driving the increased worldview defense
that MS produced, the misattribution of arousal literature (e.g., Storms &
Nisbett, 1970) suggests that these instructions might have led to increased
defensiveness, similar to what has been found in many previous studies
in which participants who are experiencing arousal were told that a
placebo pill would make them feel relaxed, which increased their subjective
experience of emotion (e.g., Zanna & Cooper, 1974). These ideas fit
the general view that many behaviors, including psychological defenses,
are motivated not by the direct experience of affect, but rather the anticipation of that affect (e.g., Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007;
Erdelyi & Goldberg, 1979).
p0185 Lambert et al. (2014) recently reported four studies that did detect
increased affect in response to an MS induction using a more refined measure of fear rather than general negative affect, consisting of a subset of items
from the PANAS (fearful, afraid, scared, frightened). They also showed that
this increased fear mediated a decrease in self-esteem in response to MS. It is
not clear what to make of these findings in light of the hundreds of studies
that did not find a difference in reported general negative affect between MS
and control conditions3 and the fact that decreased self-esteem in response to
MS runs counter to what would be predicted from TMT and has not been
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3
np0015 Lambert et al. (2014) argue that previous research has not provided a fair test of the possibility that the
MS manipulation used in TMT research produces increases in subjectively experienced affect. In addition to arguing that the mostly widely used affect measure in these studies, the PANAS-X, is not specific enough to pick up the subjective fear that they view as the most likely response to thoughts of
death, they argue that the large majority of MS studies entail comparison with other aversive events
rather than a true neutral control condition. Although this is true of the majority of studies (to respond
to reviewer and critic concerns about alternative explanations), over 20 studies have compared MS to
neutral controls such as watching television or eating food. In addition, the majority of studies using
aversive controls found no differences on affect but differences on the primary dependent variables,
which suggests that the differential effects of MS were not the results of differential affective reactions.
Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 19
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found in previous research; TMT predicts that, if anything, MS should
increase self-esteem striving, which makes this decrease in reported selfesteem difficult to interpret from the perspective of the theory. Their study
did show that, as in many previous studies, MS increased worldview defense
along with self-reported fear; but, importantly, this increased fear did not
mediate worldview defense, much as the small increase in corrugator activity
in response to subliminal death primes did not mediate worldview defense in
Arndt et al. (2001). It is unclear what if anything these findings imply regarding the processes through which MS increases defensiveness.
p0190 Other recent research has shown that MS leads to activation of brain
regions associated with affect, such as the right amygdala, anterior cingulate
cortex, and right caudate nucleus (Quirin et al., 2012). Tritt, Inzlicht, and
Harmon-Jones (2012) argue that this evidence challenges our conclusion
that MS does not produce affect and that affect does not mediate defensive
responses to it. But activation of brain regions associated with affect is not the
same as the subjective experience of affect. Perhaps MS produces some form
of implicit affect, or unconscious signal of impending affect, but that’s essentially what we mean by the concept of potential affect. Regardless of what
one calls it, though, it makes perfect sense that some sort of neural activation
would be involved in signaling the potential for affect. But there is still no
evidence that subjectively experienced emotion mediates MS effects. Nonetheless, these recent findings indicate that further research on the role of
affect and arousal in MS effects is surely warranted.
p0195 It is important to realize, though, that TMT is not a theory of MS effects
per se; rather, the MS research is one line of evidence regarding TMT’s claims
about the role of awareness of death in life. Indeed, the theory is mute as to
whether particular reminders of death will or will not arouse measureable
subjective affect; presumably this depends on how threatening and intense
the death reminders is. Consequently, although it would certainly change
our understanding of the mechanisms through which MS effects are produced, the basic theory would not be fundamentally altered or called into
question if MS effects were found to be mediated by affect and/or arousal
(as some researchers who equate the theory with the MS evidence have
implicitly implied or explicitly claimed).
s0055 5.2 Development of the Anxiety-Buffering System
p0200 The fact that children are clearly not aware of death in their earliest years of
life, nor are they aware of themselves or capable of the conceptualizing even
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the most rudimentary elements of cultural worldviews, raises the question of
how awareness of death and the anxiety-buffering capacities of worldviews
and self-esteem develop. Our analysis of how children develop the capacity
to use beliefs, values, and self-esteem to manage anxiety builds on the work
of Otto Rank, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, Jean Piaget, Ernest
Becker, John Bowlby, and other developmental theorists. The core idea
is that these more sophisticated anxiety-buffering capacities develop out
of the attachment system that evolved to insure the survival of offspring
too immature to survive on their own.
p0205 Human infants are born helpless, unable to meet their own needs, and
prone to experience and express distress when those needs are unmet. From
the beginning, the child innately fears what could harm and ultimately kill it.
These innate fears protect the child from premature death. Parents and caregivers respond to children’s distress signals by holding, rocking, and comforting them, while doing what must be done to meet their needs. These
interactions produce strong affectional bonds that provide comfort to parent
and child alike. As the child’s cognitive abilities develop, internal representations of the parent are formed which serve as an additional source of security. Then as the child’s behavioral capacities increase, the parents’ displays of
affection gradually become more contingent on the child’s behavior.
Whereas in the early months of life, children receive affection from the parents for simply existing, as they become increasingly capable, the parents
reserve their more enthusiastic displays of affection for increasingly sophisticated behavior—crawling, walking, simple verbalizations, then phrases,
sentences, and behavior that later must comport with the parents’ beliefs
and values. Through this process, children learn that meeting their parents’
versions of their culture’s values brings love and protection, whereas falling
short of their standards can bring rebukes and apparent withdrawal of affection. In this way, children learn that they are safe when they live up to the
parents’ standards and are in jeopardy when they fall short of them. Because
the parents’ values reflect those of the culture at large, the child’s emotional
well-being soon becomes dependent on living up to the values of the cultural worldview.
p0210 Children subsequently develop awareness of themselves as unique beings
with minds and experiences that are distinct from anyone else. They also
come to realize that there are limits to their parents’ power and ability to
protect them, and that their parents, like everyone else, themselves included,
are mortal. These unwelcome realizations create a need for a basis of security
broader than what the parents can provide by themselves. To help them
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Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory 21
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cope with their increasing fears, children are taught about deities that make it
possible for them and those they love to move on to a better mode of existence when they die. They also learn about secular institutions, their ethnic
and religious heritage, their nation, and various other cultural institutions
that give life meaning and permanence that they can be part of if they stay
in the good graces of others. Through these interactions with their parents,
family, clergy, teachers, and peers, they gradually become indoctrinated into
the cultural worldview that relieves anxiety by giving meaning to life and
value to themselves. Although this security is initially based on the parents’
love, it is gradually transferred to the culture at large, and in most cases, the
protective providence of the deity and spirit world that is part of the cultural
worldview. Thus, what starts as an innate threat management system that
protects preverbal children form things that could kill them adds explicit
death-denying components as children become more and more aware
of death.
p0215 In the one direct empirical evaluation of this developmental account of
which we are aware, Florian and Mikulincer (1998a) assessed the effect of
responding to a series of questions about death on 7- and 11-year-old Israeli
children’s attitudes toward other children who were either Israeli or recent
immigrants from Russia. The death reminders affected both groups’ attitudes toward the other children, but in different ways. Whereas the youngest
children’s evaluations of both groups became more negative in response to
the death reminders, the older children exhibited the typical pattern of
worldview defense found among adults: they became more positive in their
evaluation of the fellow Israeli children but more negative in their evaluation
of the recent immigrants. These findings suggest that the use of in-group
favoritism to manage death concerns probably emerges between the ages
of 7 and 11.
p0220 Research has also shown that attachment relationships continue to be
important sources of existential security long after people have begun using
their worldviews and self-esteem for this protection. A large body of evidence documents the use of romantic relationships to manage death fears
(for a review, see Mikulincer, Florian, & Hirschberger, 2004). MS increases
interest in romantic relationships, willingness to compromise to have them,
and expressions of love for one’s partner. Thoughts of separation from
romantic partners increase DTA, and thoughts of intimacy with one’s partner decrease DTA and the worldview defense that thoughts of death otherwise produce. Other research shows that adults continue to use their parents
as terror management resources and that parents get protection from death
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concerns from their children through the sense of self-worth and symbolic
immortality afforded by offspring who continue into future generations
(e.g., Cox et al., 2008; Wisman & Goldenberg, 2005).
p0225 But as is clear from the attachment literature, children vary in how
securely they bond with their parents and, therefore, in the extent to which
they associate security with pleasing their parents and, later, living up to their
internalized versions of the cultural worldview. Insecure attachments likely
force alternative ways of managing anxiety, which can interfere with their
relationships with others, ability to buy into important aspects of the cultural
worldview, and obtain security by maintaining a positive self-image.
Although most people learn to manage anxiety by maintaining a positive
self-image, those with less fortunate childhood experiences may be less able
to do so and, therefore, turn to other less adaptive ways of finding security. In
some cases, people seem to seek security in a negative self-image. Indeed,
there are relatively rare instances where people appear to hope to be remembered for things that they themselves realize are moral atrocities, as documented in the writings of the Columbine High School and Virginia Tech
mass murderers, who seemed to want their horrific actions to achieve an
ignorable sort of immortality. This suggests that those who feel rejected
by others and unable to garner attention for their positive qualities may
attempt to leave their mark on perpetuity by dramatically violating cultural
values. Perhaps difficulties in the initial development of the capacity to be
comforted by close relationships, self-esteem, and culturally shared meanings
increase the likelihood of such deviant behavior in later life.
p0230 It also seems clear that many people show developmental changes in the
way they cope with death in their later years.We propose that this transition is
instigated by the increased proximity to death that is inherent in old age,
coupled with the reduced ability to meet the standards through which people
maintained self-esteem in their younger years, the changes in dominant
worldview promoted by the now dominant younger generation, and the loss
of the close relationships (due to death and illness) that were previous bases of
security. Older adults are less prone than young persons to respond to MS
with harsher judgments of moral transgressors and those who criticize their
worldviews (e.g., Maxfield et al., 2007). Instead, older adults are more likely
to respond to MS by increasing their prosocial generative concern for future
generations (Maxfield et al., 2014). These developmental shifts are most
apparent among older adults with high levels of executive functioning
(Maxfield, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Pepin, & Davis, 2011); the finding that
older adults with low levels of executive functioning continue to respond to
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death reminders the same way younger adults do suggests that intact executive functioning may be necessary to facilitate such changes in how one relates
to and copes with the increased proximity to death associated with aging.
s0060 5.3 The Body, Nature, and Physicality
p0235 TMT posits that people cope with knowledge of the inevitability of death by
living their lives in a symbolic world of meaning in which they are enduringly significant beings rather than mere animals fated only to obliteration
when they die. A major component of most culture’s solution to this problem is to imbue life with mind and spirit, an essence that transcends the body
and is not dependent on it. This makes it possible to construe ourselves as
continuing to exist after our bodies have perished. Because bodies are the
clear culprits in death, people identify their selves more with their minds
and spirits than with their bodies, which are often viewed as mere containers
for the more essential immaterial self.
p0240 Because our physical bodies are a continual reminder of our vulnerability
and mortality, we distance ourselves from our animal nature as best we can.
An important line of research spearheaded by Jamie Goldenberg (for a
review, see Goldenberg, 2012) has demonstrated the many ways people
engage in this process. MS increases denial of similarities between humans
and other animals, disgust in response to bodily products, distancing from
animals and animalistic activities, and even avoidance of physical sensations.
MS also increases dislike of nonhuman animals (Beatson & Halloran, 2007)
and support for killing them (Lifshin, Greenberg, & Sullivan, 2014), as a way
of feeling superior to them. Additionally, DTA is increased when people are
reminded of bodily products, disgusting things, and the physical (but not
romantic) aspects of sex. These propensities are particularly strong for people
high in neuroticism or who have recently been reminded of their similarity
to other animals. Recent evidence that MS increases belief in an afterlife primarily among people who are high in mind–body dualism or when dualistic
thinking has been experimentally enhanced (Heflick, Goldenberg, Hart, &
Kamp, 2015) supports the idea that separating the mind or soul from the
body facilitates belief in literal immortality. These diverse lines of research
provide converging evidence for the proposition that people distance from
their bodies and invest their selves in abstract concepts of mind and spirit
because of the undeniable fact that bodies die.
p0245 This tendency to distance from our animal nature helps explain the
ambivalence that people feel about sex despite the great potential for
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pleasure that it entails. Cultures vary widely in both the content and restrictiveness of their rules regarding sexual conduct. Some restrict sex as something that should occur only between married men and women, in private
and in the dark, sometimes through a hole in a sheet, done only for the purpose of procreation. Other cultures encourage sharing sex partners,
expressing one’s carnal desires whenever and wherever one likes, in whatever way strikes one’s fancy, either alone or with others present. However,
even the most sexually permissive cultures attach important cultural meaning to sex, making it an expression of transcendent love, a means of spiritual
fulfillment, one’s duty to replenish the group, or an athletic contest of some
sort. Most other theories that address these issues (e.g., Buss, 1984) view sexual ambivalence as the result of innate intuitions and cultural restrictions that
evolved to facilitate group harmony and prevent disputes over mates. While
not disputing this function, TMT views the universal existence of these cultural norms as attempts to distance ourselves from our animal nature, of
which sex is a rather striking reminder.
p0250 This analysis also provides an explanation for the near universal tendency
to place greater emphasis on beauty and purity in women than men. This
may be due to the more obvious role that women’s bodies play in the creaturely activity of reproduction—menstruation, pregnancy, giving birth, and
lactation are all creaturely activities that make many people squeamish. Or it
could result from the power men have over women in most cultures. Support for these ideas is provided by studies showing that reminders of death or
one’s creaturely nature increase distancing from and derogation of pregnant,
menstruating, breast-feeding, or sexually provocative women (for a review,
see Goldenberg, 2012). Other studies have shown that witnessing a woman
accidentally drop a tampon from her purse leads both men and women to
derogate her and distance from her, while also increasing the importance
that they place on the value of physical beauty for women in general
(Roberts, Goldenberg, Manly, & Pyzsczynski, 2002). Cultures reduce the
threatening nature of reproductive processes by putting women on pedestals, treating them as objects of beauty to be admired, and placing greater
value on virginity and purity for women than men. Thus, MS leads to
devaluing of women who are overtly sexual but not women who are modestly clothed and wholesomely attractive. For example, in a recent study
(Morris & Goldenberg, 2015), MS led men to report lower liking for photos
depicting sexually provocative women posed next to physical objects, compared to a non-MS control condition. Interestingly, if these provocative
women were objectified (quite literally) by fusing them with the objects,
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MS actually led men to report more liking for the photos, compared to a
non-MS control condition. Presumably, the objectification reduced the
threat of the provocative women, which increased liking under conditions
of MS.
s0065 5.4 The Evolution of Mind and Culture
p0255 Although the primary goal of TMT is to explain contemporary psychological functioning, from its earliest incarnations, the theory also provided an
analysis of how the awareness of death affected the emergence and content
of culture (Solomon et al., 1991, Solomon, Greenberg, Schimel, Arndt, &
Pyszczynski, 2004). Thus, like most religions and contemporary evolutionary psychology, TMT provides an “origin story” for humankind—
something that the theory posits is appealing because it provides meaning
for human existence. The TMT analysis builds on evolutionary theory
and is consistent with most variations of this approach, although it adds additional forces that are given little attention by most evolutionary psychologists. Perhaps the biggest point of departure from most, but not all (e.g.,
Deacon, 1997; Langer, 1967), evolutionary analyses is that TMT draws
attention to the importance of the internal environment of the human mind as
exerting adaptive pressures that affected human nature and culture
(Pyszczynski, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2014). TMT also places greater
emphasis on the role of human ingenuity in solving both internal and external adaptive challenges and the impact that these human inventions played in
the development of mind and culture.
p0260 Consistent with all evolutionary accounts of the origins of our species,
TMT posits that the sophisticated cognitive abilities unique to our species
were selected for because they facilitated our ability to survive, reproduce,
and care for our young, which ultimately led to the propagation of the genes
responsible for these successes into future generations. In particular, these
cognitive capabilities increased the flexibility of our ancestors’ capacity to
respond to the diverse and rapidly changing environments that they
inhabited. This culminated in a new form of behavior regulation, in which
linguistic concepts of current self and standards of personal value served as
monitors that signaled the need to adjust behavior to keep it on track in
the pursuit of important goals (Becker, 1971; Carver & Scheier, 1981a,
1981b; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, & Hamilton, 1990). Although
generally highly adaptive, these sophisticated intellectual capacities made
our ancestors aware that death was inevitable, for themselves and for all other
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humans, and that death could come at any time for any number of reasons.
The juxtaposition of this awareness with the strong desire for life that came
with the diverse adaptations that facilitated surviving long enough to reproduce and care for offspring created the potential for terror. Such terror
would have seriously impeded effective goal-directed behavior, and eventually reproduction and gene perpetuation, unless effectively managed.
Whereas fear in response to clear and present danger is adaptive because
it motivates behavior to avert such threats, terror in response to awareness
of the long-term inevitability of death has little direct utility because there
is nothing that can be done to avoid this fate.
s0070 5.4.1 Gods, Morality, and Death
p0265 TMT posits that our ancestors used the same sophisticated cognitive abilities
that gave rise to the problem of terror to create a partial solution to it—they
invented ideas that enabled them to live with relative equanimity in spite of
their awareness of the inevitability of death. This awareness emerged around
the same time our ancestors were using their newfound intelligence to
answer questions about how the world works and how to survive and prosper in it with other members of their groups. Beliefs and values that helped
minimize their fears were especially appealing and likely to be communicated and spread to others and eventually became institutionalized as cultural
knowledge. As cognitive capacities continued to evolve and people became
more adept at using them, human life became increasingly dependent on the
cultural world of symbols, ideas, and values; this likely influenced the further
evolution of the human brain, in that those who were best able to adapt to
and prosper in the cultural environments of ideas, values, rules, and deities
were more likely to have their genes be propagated into future generations
(Baumeister, 2005). Our species was gradually transformed from groups of
conspecifics who responded to the challenges of the external environment,
to social animals that worked together to prosper in the external environment
and therefore were forced to adapt to the challenges of living in groups, to
cultural animals that lived in a world of symbols, words, ideas, and values,
populated by spirits and deities, that they themselves invented to ward off
their fears.
p0270 Early presentations of TMT did not address the question of where these
cultural beliefs and values came from, other than to say they were invented
to help manage terror. More recently (e.g., Greenberg et al., 2014;
Pyszczynski & Kesebir, 2012), we built on theorists who emphasize the
dialectic interplay between natural selection and cultural innovation
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(e.g., Deacon, 1997; Haidt & Joseph, 2004; Shweder & Haidt, 1993) to further explicate the content of the beliefs and values that our ancestors
invented to assuage their fears. For example, Boyer (2001), Atran (2002),
and others have argued that the concept of spirits and deities emerged as
a nonadaptive side effect of the evolved human tendency to perceive mental
states and agency in other humans. Application of these mind-concepts to
other natural phenomena is claimed to be responsible for the emergence
of concepts of gods and religions, which themselves are claimed to serve
no adaptive function. Others argue that religion emerged to facilitate social
cooperation within groups by creating a sense of fictive kinship (e.g., Bering,
2006). Although these views are sometimes presented as alternatives to the
view that religion functions to manage death-related fear (e.g.,
Kirkpatrick & Navarrete, 2006), we view them as complementary to the
TMT analysis. Concepts of spirits and deities may have indeed initially
emerged as our ancestors applied cognitive tools that had evolved to facilitate
social interaction to help them understand the workings of what we now
view as the nonpersonal forces of nature. As awareness of death emerged,
these primitive intuitions and concepts were then used as the building blocks
for the more complex death-denying beliefs about deities and spirits that
became central to culture. Because spiritual entities could not be directly
observed, people relied on the shared beliefs of others within their group
to validate their belief in them. This shared need for validation of their belief
in invisible entities that protected people from existential fears encouraged
people to congregate in groups, engage in shared rituals, and build tangible
monuments to the gods that they created. Consistent with these ideas,
research has shown that reminders of death increase belief in deities, spirits,
and an afterlife (for a review, see Vail et al., 2010), as well as estimates of
social consensus for one’s attitudes (Pyszczynski et al., 1996).
p0275 Experiential knowledge that resulted from parent–child and other
person-to-person interactions was another likely source of inspiration for
the content of religious beliefs. As discussed in Section 5.2, children’s initial
protection from distress and fear comes from meeting the wishes of their
seemingly omnipotent parents. Experiences such as these may have inspired
initial conceptualizations of even more powerful deities and how to procure
and maintain their protection. The idea that God is an attachment figure that
substitutes for our parents has been suggested by scholars of varying theoretical orientations over the years (e.g., Freud, 1930; Kirkpatrick, 2005). Viewing socialization experiences with parents who guarded our well-being in
our early years as providing intuitive inspiration for the cultural innovation
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of omnipotent gods who control access to the afterlife helps explain the specific characteristics of the deities that cultures created. Perhaps some of the
variability of conceptions of gods across cultures and historical epochs
reflects differences in parenting practices—and this variability in concepts
of gods likely influenced later cultural values regarding optimal parenting.
p0280 Another likely source of inspiration for the images of deities that our
ancestors created may have been other powerful figures with whom they
interacted, such as chiefs, shamans, and kings, who likely enjoyed the
fawning fealty that many religions assume their deities similarly require from
their followers. This helps explain the despotic, egotistical, and occasionally
benevolent character attributed to the various gods that have populated
human cultural history. As Wright (2009) suggested, religious conceptions
often reflect social and political realities that people were facing at the time,
with vengeful gods emerging during times of conflict and more benevolent
ones flourishing during times of peace, when cooperation and commerce
between different tribes were needed. As Feurbach (1841/1989) put it,
“Man created God in his own image.”
p0285 The central point of the TMT analysis of the evolution of mind and culture is that the emergence of awareness of the inevitability of death was the
cataclysmic problem that brought the experiential world of our prehuman
ancestors into play as grist for the solutions to existential problems developed
by the inquisitive minds of our newly emerging species. From this point on,
explanations for how the world works that helped assuage death-related fears
had a distinct advantage and became increasingly popular. The fear of death
and corresponding hope for immortality had a powerful influence on the
sorts of beliefs and values that people sought. Before this point, explanations
for how the world works that were effective in meeting people’s tangible
needs for food, water, warmth, and safety from predators and rival bands
of humans were most desirable and adaptive. Moral and social structures
functioned primarily to preserve peace within the group and facilitate dominance over other groups; this is the essence of the explanations for the ongoing function of morality and religion proffered by most contemporary
theories (e.g., Bering, 2006; Graham et al., 2013; Norenzayen et al., in
press). While not disputing these accounts of the earlier precursors to contemporary morality and religion, TMT adds that emerging awareness of
death altered the psychological landscape such that beliefs and values that
were effective in managing existential terror gained a distinct advantage.
Morality, which initially functioned to keep one in the good graces of
others, now became the primary basis for admission to the afterlife.
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p0290 Consistent with this view, MS increases behavior and attitudes in line
with all five of the moral intuitions posited by Moral Foundations Theory
(Haidt & Joseph, 2004): fairness, harm, loyalty, authority, and sanctity (for a
review, see Pyszczynski & Kesebir, 2012). Other research (Bassett, Van
Tongeren, Green, Sonntag, & Kilpatrick, 2014) has shown that MS polarizes
moral judgments, exaggerating the differences typically found between conservatives and liberals (e.g., Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). Additionally,
priming the concept of god, which TMT posits is the prepotent line of existential defense for many people, increases charitable giving and benevolent
judgments of others and decreases cheating (for a review, see Norenzayan
et al., in press). From the perspective of TMT, thoughts of one’s deity
increase morality by activating efforts to defeat death by qualifying for the
literal immortality that is believed to depend on staying in the deity’s good
graces by behaving in a moral manner.
p0295 Continuing cognitive evolution probably accelerated the pace at which
cultural knowledge was created and codified, which in turn likely created
further adaptive advantage for brain structures that promoted sophisticated
intellectual abilities. With increasing civilization, scholarly, scientific, and
religious traditions (which for most of human history were the same thing)
expanded in varying directions. As these intellectual traditions increased in
influence, the ideas, beliefs, narratives, and values that constituted cultural
worldviews came under increasing scrutiny, and pressures to make the many
pieces of the puzzle fit together increased. Thus, elaborate cosmologies
emerged that tried to explain everything—usually by invoking an allknowing all-powerful deity who created the universe and whose desires
and dictates became the ultimate answer to all questions. Why are we here?
Because the gods wanted us and therefore created us! What should we do?
Whatever the gods want us to do! Why? In order to attain everlasting life and
avoid eternal damnation. Thus, the cultural revolution of 40,000 years ago
likely involved a gradual shift in the motives that drove human behavior,
especially those involving morality, from staying in the good graces of other
humans to transcending death.
p0300 The idea that experiential knowledge gleaned from socialization and
interactions with others inspired the kinds of gods that cultures created
may help explain the parallels between the literal and symbolic modes of
immortality that we have often noticed over the years but not explicitly discussed in previous presentations of TMT. The two modes of immortality
may have built on and influenced each other over thousands of years of cultural evolution, such that qualifying for either requires the same things: faith
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in the cultural worldview and heroically exemplifying its standards. Just as
most religions teach that literal immortality in the form of a blissful afterlife
is granted to those who believe in their teachings and live up to their value,
the hope of symbolic immortality typically depends on leaving a lasting positive contribution to one’s culture that will be remembered long after
one dies.
s0075 5.5 Terror Management and Psychological Disorder
p0305 TMT posits that psychological equanimity requires a well-functioning anxiety buffer that entails faith in one’s worldview, self-esteem, and close interpersonal attachments. Threats to any of these anxiety-buffer components
signal a potential for anxiety that typically engenders defensive efforts to
restore the integrity of the system and thus ward off this anxiety. From this
perspective, many of the vicissitudes of thought, emotion, and behavior in
daily life reflect attempts to respond to fluctuations in the functioning of this
system. But the effectiveness of this anxiety-buffering system varies across
persons and situations, leaving some people secure and confident and others
riddled with anxiety. TMT follows many previous theories in suggesting
that many forms of psychological dysfunction and disorder result from, or
are exacerbated by, ineffective control of anxiety and reflect maladaptive
attempts to cope with such malfunctions.
p0310 Consistent with the idea that many psychological disorders result from an
inability to effectively manage anxiety, high levels of anxiety are central
components of many DSM-V diagnoses, including not only the many problems that fall under the blanket category of anxiety disorders but also others
where anxiety itself is not the defining feature, such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance
abuse, sexual difficulties, and schizophrenia. Anxiety is widely recognized as
a common comorbid problem associated with many psychological disorders.
And high levels of anxiety or neuroticism have been found to be associated
with a wide range of other undesirable psychological states and traits, such as
guilt, shame, uncertainty, shyness, procrastination, academic difficulties, and
interpersonal problems. Although most of this research is correlational, difficulties controlling anxiety seem likely to play at least some role in the etiology of diverse psychological problems.
p0315 Research has shown that reminders of death increase the severity of psychological symptoms of some disorders. For example, Strachan et al. (2007)
found that MS led diagnosed spider phobics to judge spiders depicted in
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photos as more dangerous and to spend less time looking at them, people
high in obsessive–compulsive tendencies to spend more time and use more
soap and water when washing their hands, and people high in social anxiety
to become more avoidant of social interactions. Following Yalom (1980),
Strachan et al. (2007) interpreted their findings as reflecting participants’ tendency to focalize their fear of death onto smaller objects that are easier to
control. Although there is nothing, one can do to avoid death, spiders,
germs, and embarrassing interactions with others can be avoided if one is
sufficiently vigilant.
p0320 Additional research found that concerns about death underlie psychological dissociation in response to trauma, and that individuals who experience
intense fear of death during a traumatic event are especially likely to dissociate and subsequently develop PTSD (Gershuny, Cloitre, & Otto, 2003).
Moreover, in 2005, New Yorkers reminded of their mortality and then
asked to recall how they felt during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or when they
watched video footage of the attacks, reported greater dissociative reactions,
such as feeling like they were outside of their own body, compared to a control group of students who thought about being in pain or an upcoming
exam (Kosloff et al., 2006). These dissociative reactions in turn led to more
anxieties about the future.
p0325 Another study (Abdollahi, Pyszczynski, Maxfield, & Luszczynska, 2011a,
2011b) tracked people who had survived a traumatic earthquake in Zarand,
Iran, in 2005, in which over 1500 people perished and almost 7000 had to
evacuate their homes. When reminded of their own death or the earthquake
a month later, survivors who did not dissociate in the aftermath of the earthquake responded without anxiety. They instead responded to MS by
expressing negativity toward foreigners, a typical defensive maneuver to
manage terror. However, survivors who did dissociate during the earthquake, when reminded of their mortality or the quake a month later,
reported a great deal of anxiety and did not express antipathy toward foreigners. The usual means of terror management, bolstering one’s own group
at the expense of others, was apparently unavailable to the survivors who had
dissociated. And 2 years later, these high dissociators were far more likely to
have developed PTSD than those who had not dissociated and continued to
show atypical responses to MS. This absence of defensive response to MS
mediated the relation between dissociation at the time of the quake and
PTSD 2 years later, suggesting that this disruption of normal terror management defenses plays an important role in the emergence of this disorder.
Similar results have been found for Polish victims of domestic violence
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(Kesebir et al., 2011) and survivors of a civil war in the Ivory Coast (Chatard
et al., 2012).
s0080 6. SUMMARY OF TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY
AND RESEARCH
p0330 According to TMT, the uniquely human awareness of death gives rise
to potentially paralyzing terror that is assuaged by embracing cultural worldviews and meeting or exceeding the standards of value associated with them
(i.e., self-esteem) in pursuit of literal and/or symbolic immortality. Convergent empirical support for TMT was originally obtained by studies demonstrating that: momentarily elevated or dispositionally high self-esteem
reduces anxiety, autonomic arousal, and defensive cognitive distortions produced by psychological and physical threats; making MS increases defense of
the cultural worldview and self-esteem striving; and threats to cherished cultural beliefs or self-esteem increase the accessibility of implicit death
thoughts (DTA).
p0335 Subsequent theoretical and empirical inquiry has led to: an elucidation of
the psychological mechanisms underlying MS effects, culminating in the
development of a dual-process model of proximal and distal defenses that
are instigated in response to conscious and unconscious death thoughts,
respectively; a developmental account of how the anxiety-buffering system
emerges over time as an elaboration of infant attachment to primary caretakers; a research program devoted to explaining how existential concerns
foster discomfort with physical bodies and bodily processes, particularly
sex; important additions to contemporary understanding of how mind, culture, morality, religion, and other aspects of culture evolved in the early days
of our species and continue to change to this day; and a model of psychopathology as terror mismanagement.
s0085 7. CRITICISMS OF AND ALTERNATIVES TO TERROR
MANAGEMENT THEORY
p0340 Despite the large body of research inspired by TMT, the theory also
has attracted its share of criticism. This has sometimes been a little disturbing
to us—because condemnation of the theory threatens our cherished beliefs
and self-esteem, leaving us flooded with highly accessible death-related ideation, which is compounded by the constant reminders of death that litter
our papers. But critical skepticism is essential for scientific progress. We’re
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convinced that constructive critiques of TMT and associated research have
played an invaluable role in promoting the theory’s development and refinement. In the following section, we discuss what we believe are the most
important and influential criticisms of the theory and alternative explanations for the associated research. We organize our discussion around
Martin and van den Bos’s (2014) recent overview of criticisms of TMT,
because both of these authors have been long time critics of the theory
and are, as Stephen Colbert would put it, particularly persistent “worthy
adversaries.”
s0090 7.1 Falsifiability and Insularity
p0345 One criticism Martin and van den Bos (2014) lodge against TMT is that the
theory is not falsifiable because “conflicting results are not integrated into the
theory,” “alternative explanations have been ignored,” and it is problematic
that “mortality salience can heighten self-interest ... as well as prosocial
interest ... can make people more lenient ... as well as more punitive
... it can increase tolerance ... or it can increase aggression ... [and]
lead to health-promoting or health-endangering behavior” (pp. 52–53).
However, Martin and van den Bos neglected to mention that TMT hypotheses have to our knowledge always been derived from the core propositions
of TMT. The theory emphasizes the role of the cultural worldview and bases
of self-worth in determining how people will manage the potential terror of
death. Thus, the effects of MS are never really main effects. Indeed, we
began examining the moderating role of individual differences in worldview
defense in response to MS in our second MS study (Rosenblatt et al., 1989,
Study 2) and have continued ever since. When surprising results have
occurred, as those reported to us by Ochsmann, we have then sought to
understand those anomalies by exploring relevant process in a more refined
way. This is, according to Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), how “normal science” proceeds; i.e., anomalous findings
draw attention to areas of inquiry that foster either theoretical refinement
if the anomaly can be explained by the addition of internally consistent
assumptions that are then verified empirically, or abandonment of the theory
entirely if the anomalous findings are ultimately inexplicable without additional assumptions at odds with the theory.
p0350 To give another example, Greenberg et al. (1990) found that low authoritarians did not derogate an attitudinally different other in response to MS.
This led us to hypothesize that because political liberals value tolerance as
Comp. by: DElayaraja Stage: Revises1 Chapter No.: 1 Title Name: AESP
Date:24/4/15 Time:16:12:20 Page Number: 34
34 Tom Pyszczynski et al.
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part of their worldview, they will not derogate a different other after MS;
moreover, MS might lead them to increase their tolerance of a different
other. We then found support for these hypotheses in two studies
(Greenberg et al., 1992). In the first, MS led conservatives to be more harsh
toward a liberal, but tended to lead liberals to become less harsh toward a
conservative. We then considered an alternative explanation that MS led
all these participants to be supportive of conservative views. So in a second
study, we tested the valuing tolerance hypothesis by priming the value of
tolerance, a value to which virtually all Americans pay at least lip service.
We predicted and found that this prime led MS participants to become less

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