Chapter 11 May: Existential Psychology 345by Kierkegaard and Otto Rank. A basic argument of these existentialists (as well
as writers such as Camus and Sartre) is that humans are first and foremost motivated
by fear of death. Moreover, many of these thinkers see human creativity, culture,
and meaning as unconscious defenses against mortality. The work of Becker, in
particular, has been a major source of inspiration for terror management theorists.
Threats in the Umwelt: Mortality Salience and Denial of
Our Animal Nature
Terror management theory has taken this basic assumption and tested it by con-
ducting some of the more clever and well-designed experimental studies in recent
social and personality psychology.
Although humans are part of the animal kingdom and hence mortal, they are
unique in understanding of the world and unique in realizing their own uniqueness.
Humans have long believed that they are more than just bodies—they have a soul,
a spirit, a mind.
Over the centuries, humans have learned to disavow their corporeal selves.
For example, bodily functions continue to be among the most taboo and heavily
sanctioned of social norms. To be “cultured” is to be in complete control of the
biological nature of being human. According to terror management theorists, the
crux of the denial of our bodily and animalistic nature stems from the existential
fear of death and decay of our bodies. As Sheldon Solomon and colleagues put it,
“humans could not function with equanimity if they believed they were not inherently
more significant than apes, lizards, and lima beans” (Solomon, Greenberg, &
Pyszczynski, 1991, p. 91).
Jamie Goldenberg and colleagues conducted a study to investigate the extent
to which mortality salience would lead to greater denial of our animal nature. More
specifically, they reasoned: “Cultures promote norms to help distinguish them-
selves from animals, because this distinction provides the very important psycho-
logical function of providing protection against deeply rooted concerns about
mortality” (Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Kluck, & Cornwell,
2001, p. 427). Culture, from this perspective, is the mechanism through which
awareness of death is regulated. More specifically, cultural worldviews (religion,
politics, and social norms) and self-esteem function to defend against thoughts of
death so that when death becomes salient through disasters, death of a loved one,
or images of death, people respond by clinging more closely to cultural world-
views and bolstering their self-esteem. They do this, for instance, by becoming
more patriotic, clinging more firmly to one’s in-group, or by wanting to punish
more harshly those who violate cultural norms and laws. In addition, in the emo-
tion of disgust, we see most clearly the cultural defenses against our animal
nature. Anything that reminds us of our animal nature, and ultimately of death,
is responded to with a strong sense of disgust.
Goldenberg and colleagues (2001) were interested in the opposite effect: Does
increasing death awareness increase the disgust reaction? In addition, they wondered
whether the effect would increase after a delay or distraction because the thoughts
of death would be less conscious. To test the prediction that death awareness would
increase feelings of disgust and that the effect would increase as it became less