Terror management theory is focused on the role that awareness of death plays in diverse aspects of life. Here, we discuss the theory’s implications for understanding the widely varying ways in whi...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022167820959488

Terror Management Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1963.65.4.02a00710

The Birth and Death of Meaning: A Perspective in Psychiatry and Anthropology

It’s security, stupid! Voters’ perceptions of immigrants as a security risk predicted support for Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election

Personality profiles of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Fooled by your own politics

Soon after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, Sisti and Baum-Baicker predicted that researchers “have an opportunity to conduct a natural experiment and examine the health effects of t...

Not Fake News: Toxic Consequences of the Trump Stress Effect:

Support for presidential candidate Donald Trump increased in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and San Bernardino, California, similar to Americans’ greater enthusiasm for President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. According to terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski), people are prone to embrace charismatic politicians in times of historical upheaval to mitigate existential terror. Consistent with this view, previous research has demonstrated that reminders of death (relative to an aversive control condition) increased support for a charismatic leader in a hypothetical gubernatorial election, and support for President Bush and his policies in Iraq prior to the 2004 presidential election. The present Study 1 hypothesized and found that a death reminder increased support for Donald Trump. Study 2 found that while Hillary Clinton was viewed more favorably than Donald Trump in an aversive control condition, Mr. Trump was viewed more favorably in response to a death reminder while impressions of Mrs. Clinton were unaffected. Study 3 demonstrated that asking people to think about immigrants moving into their neighborhood increased the accessibility of implicit death thoughts. These findings suggest that electoral outcomes and public policy can be affected when existential concerns are aroused.

Daniel Kaplin

Papers

You're Hired! Mortality Salience Increases Americans’ Support for Donald Trump