The awareness of mortality weighs heavily on the human mind. Death is a universal reality, and one that is central to most contemporary issues people care about, such as healthcare, crime, terrorism, and climate change. In addition, the media exposes people daily to reminders of the fragility of life. Terror management theory explains how people cope with the psychological threat death poses. People do so by viewing themselves as valued contributors to a purposeful world rather than as mere animals that will no longer exist upon death. But the version of a purposeful world people cling to for psychological security varies greatly from person to person. Consequently, when death is close to mind, people become more positive toward others who share their own beliefs and more negative toward those who espouse different beliefs, such as members of other cultures. Studies have shown how these tendencies contribute to prejudice, intergroup conflict, and terrorism. More recent studies have shown how thoughts of death can also contribute to excessive materialism, the appeal of charismatic leaders, alienation from one's own body, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, phobias, and supernatural beliefs. These proposed studies will examine how associations among death, feelings of anxiety, and views of the self affect these defensive responses to thoughts of death. The planned studies will also be the first to assess the possibility that the effects of thinking about death in people for whom death is a more vivid reality might differ from the way it affects those who have less close contact with death. To examine this issue, the proposed studies will investigate the impact of thoughts of death on persons who have closely encountered death, specifically those in need of hospice care, those who provide such care, and those who have been through death awareness courses, and compare this impact with the impact on those without such intimate experiences with death. The proposed studies will test the prediction that more direct confrontation with death leads people to construe death more as part of their life process, thereby decreasing defensiveness and the association of death with anxiety, and increasing the association of death with self. The result should be a reduction or elimination in the kind of culturally defensive judgments that are normally associated with thoughts of death (e.g., less distrust of people from other cultures).
The proposed research will help elucidate the way both young adults and people for whom death is a more imminent reality think about and cope with thoughts of death. In so doing, this work may suggest better ways for people from all walks of life to deal with the prospect of mortality. In addition to this societal goal, the more immediate impact of this work will be to help train the graduate students who assist in this research.
Death is a problem we all must cope with in some way. Research in social psychology has shown a myriad of ways in which reminders of death contribute to human behavior. Generally, reminders of death increase adherence to preferred cultural belief systems and rejection of different others, intergroup conflict, distancing from one’s own body, and striving for symbolic indicators of one’s own value. The current project further advances our understanding of the impact of death in a variety of ways. We found a number of further indications that death thoughts can lead to negative forms of behavior. In Americans, we found that death thoughts amplify negative attitudes toward symbols of Islam and negative thoughts toward symbols of Islam reduce death concerns. We have also discovered that reminders of death lead to less acceptance of the intelligence and value of animals, and more tolerance for killing them. However, we also found factors that lead to more constructive responses to reminders of death. We have found that healthcare professionals who deal with continual reminders of death seem able to cope with mortality by inflating ratings of their caring and personal connection with patients, and are less prone to harsher reactions to death. There seem to be certain people who respond to death reminders by gravitating toward counter-cultural belief systems and lifestyles. In addition, thinking about death in specific concrete ways and more open ways was found to reduce defensive responses. For example, encouraging participants to think about death in an accepting or curious way leads to greater willingness to donate one’s organs after death, suggesting greater death acceptance. We have also found that money seems to be used to control concerns about death, and depending on salient values, can do so through generosity or greed. Global threats can ameliorate the tendency of death threat to encourage intergroup animosity. And finally, belief in a death transcending soul has protective value and can reduce resistance to belief in global threats to the continuance of humanity. Taken together, these findings suggest ways of helping those who must face either their own or other people’s death on a daily basis cope better with the stress this produces and more generally suggest ways people can respond in more constructive ways to death reminders in daily life.
