Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (-.32); uncertainty tolerance (-.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (-.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (-.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.

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Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.

Publisher Summary This chapter proposes that the potential for abject terror created by the awareness of the inevitability of death in an animal instinctively programmed for self-preservation and continued experience lies at the root of a great deal of human motivation and behavior. This chapter presents the results of a substantial body of research that attests to the broad influence of the problem of death on human social behavior and illuminates the processes through which concerns about mortality exert their influence. The chapter overviews the primary assumptions and propositions of terror management theory and a description of the initial research conducted to test the theory. It presents a detailed consideration of more recent research that establishes the convergent and discriminant validity of the mortality salience treatment and the robustness of its effects through the use of alternative mortality salience treatments and comparison treatments, and replications by other researchers; it extends the range of interpersonal behaviors that are demonstrably influenced by terror management concerns. Moreover, it demonstrates the interaction of mortality salience with other theoretically relevant situational and dispositional variables, and provides an account of the cognitive processes through which mortality salience produces its effects. Finally, this chapter discusses the relation of terror management motives to other psychological motives and gives a consideration of issues requiring further investigation.

Terror Management Theory of Self-Esteem and Cultural Worldviews: Empirical Assessments and Conceptual Refinements

https://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/dahe7472/JVB%20-%202001a.pdf

Moral Virtues, Fairness Heuristics, Social Entities, and Other Denizens of Organizational Justice.

In major league baseball, a hitter could have a long and productive career by maintaining a .300 average, that is, by getting a base hit 30% of the time. A great deal of money could be earned and fame accrued. Yet the other 70% of the time, this player would have failed. The vast majority of attempts to hit the ball would result in ‘‘making an out’’ and thus pose a potential threat to the player’s sense of personal worth and social regard. Like major league baseball players, people in contemporary society face innumerable failures and self‐threats. These include substandard performance on the job or in class, frustrated goals or aspirations, information challenging the validity of long‐held beliefs, illness, the defeat of one’s political party in an election or of one’s favorite sports team in a playoV, scientific evidence suggesting that one is engaging in risky health behavior, negative feedback at work or in school, rejection in a romantic relationship, real and perceived social slights, interpersonal and intergroup conflict, the misbehavior of one’s child, the loss of a loved one, and so on. In the course of a given day, the potential number of events that could threaten people’s ‘‘moral and adaptive adequacy’’—their sense of themselves as good, virtuous, successful, and able to control important life outcomes (Steele, 1988)—seems limitless and likely to exceed the small number of events that aYrm it. A major undertaking for most people is to sustain self‐integrity when faced with the inevitable setbacks and disappointments of daily life—the 70% of the time 183

/pdf/the-psychology-of-self-defense-self-affirmation-theory-4s8wax4h1y.pdf

The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory

Researchers have recently questioned the benefits associated with having high self-esteem. The authors propose that the importance of self-esteem lies more in how people strive for it rather than whether it is high or low. They argue that in domains in which their self-worth is invested, people adopt the goal to validate their abilities and qualities, and hence their self-worth. When people have self-validation goals, they react to threats in these domains in ways that undermine learning; relatedness; autonomy and self-regulation; and over time, mental and physical health. The short-term emotional benefits of pursuing self-esteem are often outweighed by long-term costs. Previous research on self-esteem is reinterpreted in terms of self-esteem striving. Cultural roots of the pursuit of self-esteem are considered. Finally, the alternatives to pursuing self-esteem, and ways of avoiding its costs, are discussed.

The Costly Pursuit of Self-Esteem.

On the basis of the terror management theory proposition that self-esteem provides protection against concerns about mortality, it was hypothesized that self-esteem would reduce the worldview defense produced by mortality salience (MS). The results of Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed this hypothesis by showing that individuals with high self-esteem (manipulated in Experiment 1; dispositional in Experiment 2) did not respond to MS with increased worldview defense, whereas individuals with moderate self-esteem did. The results of Experiment 3 suggested that the effects of the first 2 experiments may have occurred because high self-esteem facilitates the suppression of death constructs following MS.

Terror management theory and self-esteem: evidence that increased self-esteem reduces mortality salience effects.

We tested the hypothesis, derived from terror management theory, that mortality salience would increase intergroup bias between minimal groups. After assignment to groups, participants wrote about death or a neutral topic, and rated the personality characteristics of the ingroup and outgroup. Results supported the hypothesis.

Sheldon Solomon

Papers

Terror management theory and self-esteem: evidence that increased self-esteem reduces mortality salience effects.

Short Note The effects of mortality salience on intergroup bias between minimal groups

Death Can Be Hazardous to Your Heath: Adaptive and Ironic Consequences of Defense Against the Terror of Death