Existential Flashcards
Terror Management Theory- definition of ‘terror’
existential fear/anxiety of our own mortality
Solomon, Pyszczyski, Greenberg 1980-90s
We use our intelligence to create culture which gives us a sense of security and meaning in the face of our mortality- makes us feel more important than we are
Ernest Becker (anthropologist)- culture provides meaning
TMT starts with these existential concerns- what happens when we are driven to think about our own mortality
Similarities and differences between us in a cucumber
Differences: the cucumber is unaware of its own demise- free from the anxiety resulting from our awareness of inevitability of death
Similarities: our involvement in culture levels the playing field with us and the cucumber- by using our intelligence which led us to fear death in the first place, we can create culture which makes us feel like we outlive our bodies through the culture we leave behind
Priming mortality salience
Made to think of what will happen when we die
Mechanisms to deal with terror
Proximal- avoid/distract and deny our vulnerability
Distal- defend our world view e.g. moral, nationalistic, materialistic values. also build up our self-esteem
Difference in the effects of our proximal and distal death thoughts
Distal- make us more punitative- prosititution, more materialistic and nationalistic
Proximal- distract ourselves- thinking about death itself
Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, Lynn (1988) Prostitution study
Used judges- set bail for release of a prostitute
Prime with mortality salience and then filler task to ensure a distal response
those primed set bail 9x higher $450 vs $50
Huge effect size- replicated with students with a smaller but still substantial effect size
Classic TMT study- Greenberg, Pyszczynski.. (1990) Nationalism
Those primed with mortality had increased endorsement of an individual who supports one’s world view which was that of optimism about American politics and the way the country is run. They endorsed the negative message less compared to the control group.
Materialsim study- Dr. Ilan Dar-Nimrod (2012)
wealth protects people from existential anxieties
TV drama- Six Feet Under (death of child) and West Wing (control)
West wing first, then 4 commercials (rated) then SFU and rate 4 commercials. This was counterbalanced. After SFU, the products were more appealing.
Follow up with movies and commercials and then word completion task to see if thoughts about death e.g. coff…ee or in
MMM Heine, Proulx, & Vohs (2006)
Meaning Maintenance Model
meaning: mental representations of expected relations that organise their perceptions of the world- expectations drive us- driven to make connections
similar constructs: schemata, paradigms, scripts, worldviews, narratives
5 ways to create a MMM’s meaning threat
Don’t need such a strong stimulus as in TMT- can be subtle and simple:
1. Cards- red spades rather than black-Bruner, J., & Postman, L. (1949)- become very uncomfortable when don’t know what’s wrong with it- threat reaction to simple perceptual violation
2. Meaning threats: child dies- goes against ‘bad things happen to bad people’
3. Lecturer exploding and swearing at student for phone ringing- expectation that teachers respect students
4. Switching experimenters- setting bail for prostitutes
5. Proulx& Heine (2009)Study 1: Kafka-absurd, surrealist narrative- grammar pattern recognition
Study 2: Threaten self-unity- describe two aspects of self- grammar pattern recognition
Five As- dealing with meaning threat
- Assimilation- just world hypothesis- child had bad mother
- Accommodation- sometimes bad things happen to good people
- Affirmation- ‘fluid compensation’- God wanted the child in heaven early- turned into good event- compensate in same area but also in different areas (abstraction)
- Assembly- most complex- constructing a more powerful moral theory to replace a more primative sense of right and wrong e.g. making art- new, evolving
- Abstraction- ‘fluid compensation’- use environment to compensate for threat- reaffirming alternative framework with pattern recognition
Use ‘fluid compensation’ concept when designing a new MMM study
Have a participant practice a task- told that it required some practice, speed task. A confederate could enter late and have to go straight into the experiment with no practice but they finish early. Then test what the participant attributes this early finish to.
OR
Read narrative with a strange ending (meaning threat)- student who worked really hard all the way through highschool but missed the cutoff mark by .1 so was not able to make it into the university of choice vs. control- story of successful admission to university
Sorting task- list the nouns, verbs and adjectives from the story into separate columns- number listed in a discrete period of time (abstraction) OR scrambled sentence task
