Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIII. Humanistic/Existential
Theories- May: Existential
Psychology
(^370) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
364 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
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 particu-
lar, has been a major source of inspiration for terror management theorists.
Mortality Salience and Denial of Our Animal Nature
Terror management theory has taken this basic assumption and tested it by conduct-
ing 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 sanc-
tioned of social norms. To be “cultured” is to be in complete control of the biologi-
cal 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 themselves
from animals, because this distinction provides the very important psychological
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 worldviews 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 vi-
olate cultural norms and laws. In addition, in the emotion 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 in-
crease feelings of disgust and that the effect would increase as it became less con-
scious, they manipulated death salience in university students (60% female). The
outcome variable for the study was how much disgust participants expressed on a
questionnaire. The independent variables were whether one’s own mortality was