WEEK 12 - THE FEAR OF DEATH: EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
How do we cope with:
- Knowledge of our own mortality
- the possibility that life is meaningless
- the limitations of knowing
- the constraints on, and possibility of, freedom of choice (free will)?
Problem of meaning:
Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche
Terror Management Theory
Origins of Terror Management Theory
Ernest Becker 19-25-74
• Why do people need self-esteem?
• Why do people need to believe that out of all the possible ways of understanding the world, their
own is the only one that is literally correct?
• Wy is it so difficult for people who are different from each other to peacefully get along with each
other?
• We are smart enough to realise we are moral
• This poses a problem: it causes a large amount of anxiety
• People solve this problem by establishing, or subscribing to, shared world views (culture) that
provide meaning and value
• Raisin self-esteem reduces anxiety in response to images of death
• reminders of death increase striving to maintain one’s cultural worldview - manipulating mortality
salience
• reward for alleged hero as a function of morality salience (uphold cultural values)
• bond for alleged prostitute as a function of mortality salience (violate cultural values)
• Self-esteem mortality salience effects on worldview defence : self-esteem reduces mortality
salience effects on worldview defence
• threatening worldview increases death-thought accessibility
• threatening self-esteem increases death-thought accessibility
*Measuring death-thought accessibility
sample word competition task
Converging evidence that world-view threat increases death-thought accessibility
Empirical evidence for TMT
• raising self-esteem reduces anxiety in response to images of death
• reminders of death increase striving to maintain faith in one’s cultural worldview
• Self-esteem reduces mortality salience effects on worldview defence
• Threatening worldview or self-esteem increase death-thought accessibility
How do we cope with:
- Knowledge of our own mortality
- the possibility that life is meaningless
- the limitations of knowing
- the constraints on, and possibility of, freedom of choice (free will)?
Problem of meaning:
Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche
Terror Management Theory
Origins of Terror Management Theory
Ernest Becker 19-25-74
• Why do people need self-esteem?
• Why do people need to believe that out of all the possible ways of understanding the world, their
own is the only one that is literally correct?
• Wy is it so difficult for people who are different from each other to peacefully get along with each
other?
• We are smart enough to realise we are moral
• This poses a problem: it causes a large amount of anxiety
• People solve this problem by establishing, or subscribing to, shared world views (culture) that
provide meaning and value
• Raisin self-esteem reduces anxiety in response to images of death
• reminders of death increase striving to maintain one’s cultural worldview - manipulating mortality
salience
• reward for alleged hero as a function of morality salience (uphold cultural values)
• bond for alleged prostitute as a function of mortality salience (violate cultural values)
• Self-esteem mortality salience effects on worldview defence : self-esteem reduces mortality
salience effects on worldview defence
• threatening worldview increases death-thought accessibility
• threatening self-esteem increases death-thought accessibility
*Measuring death-thought accessibility
sample word competition task
Converging evidence that world-view threat increases death-thought accessibility
Empirical evidence for TMT
• raising self-esteem reduces anxiety in response to images of death
• reminders of death increase striving to maintain faith in one’s cultural worldview
• Self-esteem reduces mortality salience effects on worldview defence
• Threatening worldview or self-esteem increase death-thought accessibility
