User:Moni3/Death

Terror Management Theory (TMT) is a belief held by social psychologists stating that all human behavior, on individual and large group scales, is motivated by the fear of mortality. The theory is derived from anthropologist Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction The Denial of Death, in which Becker argues all human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability that all people die. The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profound—albeit subconscious—anxiety in people that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it. They build symbols: laws, religions, cultures, and belief systems to explain the significance of life, define what makes certain characteristics, skills, and talents extraordinary, reward each other when they find people who exemplify certain attributes, and punish or kill others who do not adhere to their cultural worldview.

The symbols that create cultural worldviews are fiercely protected, as if, according to some psychologists, they are to be protected as actual life is. The Terror Management Theory posits that when people are reminded of their own deaths, they more readily enforce these symbols, often leading to punitive actions, violence, and war.

Consequently, reminders of deaths on large scales, such as war, foster reproduction and further creation and protection of symbols.

Background
The culmination of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker's (1925–1974) life work was his 1973 book The Denial of Death in which he asserts that, as intelligent animals, humans are able to perceive the inevitability of their deaths. They therefore spend their lives building and believing in cultural elements that illustrate how to make themselves stand out as individuals and give their lives significance and meaning. Death creates an anxiety in humans; it strikes at unexpected and random moments, and its nature is essentially unknowable, causing people to spend most of their time and energy to explain, forestall, and avoid it.

Becker expounded upon the previous writings of Sigmund Freud, Søren Kierkegaard, Norman O. Brown, and Otto Rank, putting the greatest emphasis on Kierkegaard and Rank. According to clinical psychiatrist Morton Levitt, Becker replaces the Freudian preoccupation with sexuality with the fear of death as the primary motivation in human behavior.

People desire to think of themselves as beings of value and worth with a feeling of permanence, a concept in psychology known as self-esteem, that somewhat resolves the realization that people may be no more important than any other living thing. Becker refers to high self-esteem as heroism: "the problem of heroics is the central one of human life, that it goes deeper into human nature than anything else because it is based on organismic narcissism and on the child's need for self-esteem as the condition for his life. Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning."

Children are taught that they are inherently special and are protected by their parents. They constantly strive to become individuals who are seen as viable beings. Becker uses the example of sibling rivalry to illustrate this: when a child expresses anger or frustration that a sibling has received more of something, it is an example of his asserting his need to consider himself having a primary value, or not second best. This is further fostered among adults in the belief—often translated into systems like laws—that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished, and people use this belief to rationalize that life should be fair.

Description
The fear of death is not usually an ever-present conscious worry for people, and the Terror Management Theory does not address basic human needs like obtaining food and shelter or other issues of physical self-preservation. Instead, it addresses the buffers people create to avoid constant consideration of death. More minor issues like jobs or relationships usually preoccupy most people's thoughts. The anxiety related to the knowledge that one will die one day, however, motivates people to invest in behaviors that seek to make them immortal, either literally or symbolically. Religions provide people literal immortality by explaining their beliefs of an afterlife. Symbolic immortality is achieved by leaving a legacy through children, accomplishments, fame, wealth, or notoriety. These buffers have two components: that a cultural worldview exists and is valid, and that the individual is meeting or exceeding the standards of the cultural worldview.

The success at which a person meets or exceeds his specific cultural worldview is the basis for the concept of self-esteem, a universal need. Each culture has a different way to measure success, and teaching members of a society the means by which success is reached begins in infancy. Manners, rules, patriotism, sin, virtue, and other ways to behave in "good" and "bad" ways are taught to children by parents. When children become aware of mortality, typically between the ages of three to ten, their focus shifts from the standards set by their parents to standards set by the surrounding culture. The greater measurement of success one realizes in life, the more secure the person is in his identity and place within the culture: self-esteem is higher.

When the buffers that people create and maintain are disturbed, however, anxiety is heightened and people express extreme anger or fear. Studies have shown that people are more comfortable and ready to believe that problems or mistakes are caused by outside opposing or neutral forces than attribute faults to themselves. Likewise, when similar failure rates are attributed to peers (other people are unable to do this), the anxiety about not succeeding is decreased.

Coming into contact with people who fundamentally disagree because they have been taught a separate cultural worldview causes them to question their own beliefs. Reacting to these questions elicits several responses: converting others into another system, delegating other systems as lesser or invalid, assimilating others into systems by persuasion or force, accommodating by taking some aspects of a culture into another system, and annihilating people who exhibit the greatest threat to their worldview.

Experimentation
As of 2010, more than 160 studies examining 277 experiments to produce data about TMT have been performed. These exercises involve asking participants to fill out questionnaires, ostensibly to complete a personality survey, but in which was placed questions asking the participants to consider their own deaths by writing a short essay. Within TMT studies asking someone to consider his death is called mortality salience. Control groups were asked to consider other negative experiences such as physical pain or social rejection. Researchers hoped to gather data to support the hypothesis that when reminded of one's death, a person will react more strenuously to protect the symbols within his cultural worldview, and more readily reject people who they see as having fundamental differences.

The first study was performed on 22 municipal court judges in Tuscon, Arizona, in 1989. Judges were chosen because the position requires them to think rationally and logically, yet adhere to laws, which are representations of moral culture. After filling out questionnaires, judges were asked to review a false case to determine potential bond for a woman arrested for prostitution. The judges who were faced with mortality salience on average recommended bond be set at $455. Those who had not been asked to consider their own deaths recommended on average $50 bond.

Participants were given a short delay in which they performed a simple task, then asked to assess their attitudes toward someone with whom they fundamentally disagreed.