A meta-analysis was conducted on empirical trials investigating the mortality salience (MS) hypothesis of terror management theory (TMT). TMT postulates that investment in cultural worldviews and self-esteem serves to buffer the potential for death anxiety; the MS hypothesis states that, as a consequence, accessibility of death-related thought (MS) should instigate increased worldview and self-esteem defense and striving. Overall, 164 articles with 277 experiments were included. MS yielded moderate effects (r = .35) on a range of worldview- and self-esteem-related dependent variables (DVs), with effects increased for experiments using (a) American participants, (b) college students, (c) a longer delay between MS and the DV, and (d) people-related attitudes as the DV. Gender and self-esteem may moderate MS effects differently than previously thought. Results are compared to other reviews and examined with regard to alternative explanations of TMT. Finally, suggestions for future research are offered.

Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research:

New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis

The social psychological literature on threat and defense is fragmented. Groups of researchers have focused on distinct threats, such as mortality, uncertainty, uncontrollability, or meaninglessness, and have developed separate theoretical frameworks for explaining the observed reactions. In the current chapter, we attempt to integrate old and new research, proposing both a taxonomy of variation and a common motivational process underlying people’s reactions to threats. Following various kinds of threats, people often turn to abstract conceptions of reality—they invest more extremely in belief systems and worldviews, social identities, goals, and ideals. We suggest that there are common motivational processes that underlie the similar reactions to all of these diverse kinds of threats. We propose that (1) all of the threats present people with discrepancies that immediately activate basic neural processes related to anxiety. (2) Some categories of defenses are more proximal and symptom-focused, and result directly from anxious arousal and heightened attentional vigilance associated with anxious states. (3) Other kinds of defenses operate more distally and mute anxiety by activating approach-oriented states. (4) Depending on the salient dispositional and situational affordances, these distal, approach-oriented reactions vary in the extent to which they (a) resolve the original discrepancy or are merely palliative; (b) are concrete or abstract; (c) are personal or social. We present results from social neuroscience and standard social psychological experiments that converge on a general process model of threat and defense.

/pdf/threat-and-defense-from-anxiety-to-approach-43ibf67786.pdf

Threat and defense: From anxiety to approach

Terror management theory (TMT) highlights the motivational impact of thoughts of death in various aspects of everyday life. Since its inception in 1986, research on TMT has undergone a slight but significant shift from an almost exclusive focus on the manipulation of thoughts of death to a marked increase in studies that measure the accessibility of death-related cognition. Indeed, the number of death-thought accessibility (DTA) studies in the published literature has grown substantially in recent years. In light of this increasing reliance on the DTA concept, the present article is meant to provide a comprehensive theoretical and empirical review of the literature employing this concept. After discussing the roots of DTA, the authors outline the theoretical refinements to TMT that have accompanied significant research findings associated with the DTA concept. Four distinct categories (mortality salience, death association, anxiety-buffer threat, and dispositional) are derived to organize the reviewed DTA studies, and the theoretical implications of each category are discussed. Finally, a number of lingering empirical and theoretical issues in the DTA literature are discussed with the aim of stimulating and focusing future research on DTA specifically and TMT in general.

A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research.

Gaining insight into the nature and consequences of people’s global self-evaluations (i.e., their selfesteem) has been fraught with difficulty. Nearly 2 decades ago, researchers suggested that such difficulties might be addressed by the development of a new class of measures designed to uncover implicit self-esteem. In this article, we evaluate the construct validity of the 2 most common measures of implicit self-esteem, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and Name–Letter Test (NLT). Our review indicates that the research literature has not provided strong or consistent support for the validity of either measure. We conclude that both tests are impoverished measures of self-esteem that are better understood as measures of either generalized implicit affect (IAT) or implicit egotism (NLT). However, we suggest that there surely are aspects of self-esteem that people are unwilling or unable to report and suggest a general approach that may allow researchers to tap these unspoken aspects of self-esteem.

/pdf/implicit-self-esteem-nature-measurement-and-a-new-way-1i4o0qv85v.pdf

Implicit self-esteem: nature, measurement, and a new way forward.

Three studies tested the roles of implicit and/or explicit self-esteem in reactions to mortality salience. In Study 1, writing about death versus a control topic increased worldview defense among participants low in implicit self-esteem but not among those high in implicit self-esteem. In Study 2, a manipulation to boost implicit self-esteem reduced the effect of mortality salience on worldview defense. In Study 3, mortality salience increased the endorsement of positive personality descriptions but only among participants with the combination of low implicit and high explicit self-esteem. These findings indicate that high implicit self-esteem confers resilience against the psychological threat of death, and therefore the findings provide direct support for a fundamental tenet of terror management theory regarding the anxiety-buffering role of self-esteem.

Emily-Ana Filardo

Papers

Terror management theory and self-esteem revisited: the roles of implicit and explicit self-esteem in mortality salience effects.