Terror Management Theory

Sources of this post: Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory: From Genesis to Revelation (2015). The Denial of Death (1974).

TMT was proposed to answer 3 basic questions:

• Why do people need self-esteem?
• Why do people need to believe that their own way to understand the world is the only correct one?
• Why is it so hard for different people to get along?

Self esteem

First though, what's self-esteem? A theory of self-esteem (2002):

an individual's overall positive evaluation of the self. It is composed of two distinct dimensions, competence and worth. The competence dimension (efficacy-based self-esteem) refers to the degree to which people see themselves as capable and efficacious. The worth dimension (worth-based self-esteem) refers to the degree to which individuals feel they are persons of value.

The part about "competence" is pretty simple: it is your evaluation of how likely it is for you to reach your goals. Since thinking is for moving, we should always give examples in motion. So here are some ur-examples are the motor questions:

• How high can I jump? Can I outrun this person? Can I climb this tree? How far can I throw this rock?

The part about "worth" is not so simple. It depends on your value system, and has two main components:

• Value evaluations: statements arguing why you are good or bad. For example: "I am the best in math at class, that makes me a little good." "I made my friend angry, that makes me very bad." "I am infertile, and so I am lessening the overpopulation problem, so that makes me good."
• Value emotions: "I hate myself." "I care for my happiness." "I pity myself." "I would not trust myself to make good decisions." "I admire myself."

There is also the concept of collective self-esteem, which is esteem for a group that the self belongs to. For example:

• Competence: How fast can America build roads and railways? How high can Chinese build skyscrapers?
• Worth: "Our school is the best in the city." "Our department is the most valuable in the company." "I hate my country." "I trust the wisdom of my crowd."

Understand the world

What does it mean "to understand the world"? It means having a model of the world in your head that you can use to explain and predict it. This varies greatly across species, but usually when a human makes a model of the world, it has these parts:

• Physical model: air, liquid, soft body, hard body, gravity, smoke, light and shadows, diffraction, velocity, force, diffusion of smell...
• Machine models: function, purpose, origin, capability, state of decay and repair...
• Agent models: goals, models (yes, models about models), knowledge, origin, capabilities...

I thought up this division of the world based on Dennett's three stances. I would quote some paper but I can't quite find one review of comprehensive world-models, so I had to make up my own.

Christianity is a pretty straightforward model of the world:

• Physical model: Used to be that geocentric model. It has now mostly upgraded to the modern age. The main departures are about souls (a kind of stuff that does not decay with time or made of any kind of scientifically discovered particles, interacts with human brains in some way to exercise partial control over human bodies.).
• Machine models: The usual.
• Agent models: The usual. There's also God, which acts in mysterious ways, answers prayers, and might cause miracles and send intentional signs in daily life.

The hardcore scientific materialist has this model instead.

• Physical model: The usual, but includes all creatures.
• Machine models: The usual, but includes everyone.
• Agent models: The usual, but may include a lot more animals.

Notice that although such a materialist would insist that humans are modelled by physics just as much as a cup, that is not a workable model (due to how complex humans are), so they still have to use agent models for people. I said "may include a lot more animals" because modern science has shown that the neural basis for agent-behavior is a lot more widespread than usually assumed, including, for example, lobsters.

Problems with being a human

There are two problems of being a human: shortness and smallness.

1. Life is finite, too short, and death comes too fast. Everything we do disappears, and if something isn't permanent, it is not meaningful in a satisfactory way.
2. The universe is too big and the body is too small. The world is too complex and every value system seem not universal enough to deal with it. (This can be apparent when one considers how "immoral" other animals behave.) And if a value system isn't universal, it isn't satisfactory ("relativism" is a dirty word).

It is human nature to want to be heroes. A hero is someone who faces the two problems, and answers by 

1. Creating timeless meaning through merging with something beyond
2. Become a unique and outstanding individual in the writhing sea of warm and cold bodies.

Be a hero

There are several methods for becoming a hero.

Usually, people become heroes by following cultural scripts. Like, become a character, a lawyer, a doctor, an artist, have a family, retire with good savings, travel somewhere, contribute to the local community.

1. The "timeless beyond" is the culture.
2. People try to be outstanding in some small field, by being great at their job, or at a hobby (such as ponies).

Another method is by religion. 

1. The timeless beyond is God, or Nirvana, or Atman, or something like that.
2. To be a distinct individual, one can do it by being recognized as a necessary individual by God (God made me, so I must have a necessary place in this world).

Another method, less secure, is worship of loved ones, be it the glorious leader, the pope, a romantic partner, a true friend, the parents, or something. It is basically treating them like gods, a personal religion. This fails a lot more easily, since people are very flawed.

Be drunk

Self-reflection is that monstrous process which applies logic towards one's self, and blurts out the poisonous truth "I will die.". The bliss of intoxication is precisely in interrupting self-reflection. The methods differ but the function is the same. Alcohol, tranquilizers, new love, blissful ego-death of LSD, mathematical enlightenment, losing yourself in the sublime, and so on. 

Here, the decadent poet Charles Baudelaire said it well:

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'

 

Tests for TMT

The model of TMT is this: there are two forces in the mind:

• Death-awareness: A constant force pushing up the knowledge "I will die" into consciousness. 
• Death-denial: A variable force pushing it down.

The variable force is feedback-controlled, so that if the "I will die" thought starts to rise, the death-denial force increases as well.

Death-awareness

Death-awareness isn't actually constant. Rather, it is not under direct inner control. Like being awake, it has its sense of involuntariness. It can be excited, but cannot be un-excited. It can only be left alone to die down.

How to experimentally increase death-awareness? Examples:

• Casually interview people in front of a morgue, a crematorium, or something like that.
• Ask people to read news articles where people died (in contrast to merely in great pain).
• Under the ruse of "psychological profiling", ask people to answer questions like
• "Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you"
• "What do you think happens to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead?"

How to experimentally measure death-awareness? Examples:

• Ask people to complete words like G R _ _ _, S _ _ L L, D E _ _. See if they answer GREAT, SKILL, DEAL, or GRAVE, SKULL, DEAD.
• Use implicit bias test and see if they more easily associate death-words with their own groups.

There is also an indirect way to measure death-awareness: it causes anxiety. So measuring anxiety is a weak measure of death-awareness.

Death-denial

How to experimentally increase or decrease death-denial? Examples:

• Ask people to read articles where their own group (usually national) gets criticized/praised.

How to measure death-denial? Examples:

• Measure how much punishment people assign to cheaters.
• How much they prefer their ingroup and dislike their outgroup.
• How much effort they want to devote to their loved ones.
• How much they care about personal health.

Predictions and evidence

So basically there are two forces that can be manipulated and measured. What are the predictions?

• If we increase the force pushing down by supporting their death-denial abilities, then death-awareness and anxiety would decrease.
• If we increase the force pushing up by reminding people of death, then the feedback control would increase the force pushing down and people double down their death-denial efforts.

Hundreds of research gives strong evidence for the following:

• Increasing self-esteem, faith in one’s cultural worldview or attachment security makes people less prone to anxiety and anxiety-related behavior, and reduces accessibility of death-related thought.
• It also eliminates the effects of reminders of death on self-esteem striving and worldview defense.
• Reminders of death increase striving to maintain faith in one ’s cultural worldview, self-esteem, and attachment security.