0390435333.pdf

Feist−Feist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

III. Humanistic/Existential

Theories

12. May: Existential
    Psychology

© The McGraw−Hill^373

Companies, 2009

Chapter 12 May: Existential Psychology 367

design as Study 1 (two levels of mortality salience and two levels of fitness self-
esteem). But it also had an additional factor of immediacy: Participants assessed
their fitness intentions either immediately after the mortality salience manipulation
or after a brief delay. Therefore, the second study was a replication and extension of
the first and resulted in a 2
2
2 design.
Participants again were university students (50% female). The main difference
in procedures and measures from Study 1 was the inclusion of a filler reading task
(five mundane pages from a work by Camus that had no reference to death or other
existential issues) for the delay group. In other words, after the mortality salience or
dental procedure manipulation, participants either read the Camus passage (delay
group) or immediately answered the more elaborate fitness intention questionnaire,
consisting of nine rather than two questions. After a factor analysis revealed two of
the nine fitness intention questions did not cohere with the others, a final seven-item
scale was constructed by standardizing and summing responses to the seven ques-
tions. Another difference between the two studies was that no participants were
primed by reading about how exercise increases longevity.
Results of the first study were replicated: In the immediate group only, mor-
tality salience led to greater desire for exercise compared to the painful dental pro-
cedure. In the second study, however, there was an overall main effect for fitness
self-esteem, with participants for whom fitness is important to their overall self-esteem
intending to do more exercise following mortality salience than those for whom it
was not so important. In addition, again there was a main effect for mortality
salience: Regardless of immediacy condition, participants who were made aware of
their mortality intended to do more exercise than those who were made to think
about undergoing a painful dental procedure. Immediacy also had an overall main
effect, with participants who delayed answering questions about their fitness inten-
tions claiming they would exercise more than those who immediately responded. Fi-
nally, an interaction was found such that fitness intentions increased after mortality
salience only for those participants for whom fitness was an important source of their
self-esteem.
Overall, the results of these two studies confirm the importance of distin-
guishing between proximal (conscious) and distal (unconscious) defenses against
death. They also confirm the idea that people may well be motivated to undertake be-
haviors that fight against death and disease (namely, exercise) when their own mor-
tality is made salient, especially if exercise is a relevant and important source of their
self-esteem.
In summary, terror management seems to bolster the fundamental principle of
existential psychology that both conscious and unconscious anxiety provoked by
thoughts of death is a powerful force behind much of human behavior.

Critique of May

Existentialism in general and May’s psychology in particular have been criticized as
being anti-intellectual and antitheoretical. May acknowledged the claim that his
views did not conform to the traditional concept of theory, but he staunchly defended
his psychology against the charge of being anti-intellectual or antiscientific. He