Chapter One - Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory: From Genesis to Revelation

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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) self-esteem 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.

Section snippets

Introduction: Purpose and Goals of the Theory

Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg et al., 1986, Solomon et al., 1991, Solomon et al., 2015) was originally developed 30 years ago to address three broad questions about the roots of human motivation and behavior: (1) Why do people need self-esteem? (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

The Intellectual Roots of Terror Management Theory

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

Fundamental Propositions of Terror Management Theory

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

Research on the Fundamental Propositions of Terror Management Theory

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

Terror Management Theory and Conceptual Interconnections

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

Summary of Terror Management Theory and Research

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

Criticisms of and Alternatives to Terror Management Theory

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 convinced that constructive critiques of TMT

Issues for Future Research and Theory Development

Although there are many issues for which further research and theoretical specification are needed, here we briefly discuss what we see as some of the most pressing ones.

Conclusion

TMT has come a long way over the past 30 years. Both terror management research and the number of researchers contributing to it have been increasing exponentially in the last decade (see tmt.missouri.edu). In fact, when we entered “terror management” in a Psych Info search, we were startled to find, from January 2014 to January 2015 alone, 53 publications (excluding dissertations). Although a handful of these were not empirical papers, these publications reported a total of 83 supportive

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