Daniel Sullivan

Focus theory of normative conduct and terror-management theory: the interactive impact of mortality salience and norm salience on social judgment.

Research on terror-management theory has shown that after mortality salience (MS) people attempt to live up to cultural values. But cultures often value very different and sometimes even contradictory standards, leading to difficulties in predicting behavior as a consequence of terror-management needs. The authors report 4 studies to demonstrate that the effect of MS on peoples social judgments depends on the salience of norms. In Study 1, making salient opposite norms (prosocial vs. proself) led to reactions consistent with the activated norms following MS compared with the control condition. Study 2 showed that, in combination with a pacifism prime, MS increased pacifistic attitudes. In Study 3, making salient a conservatism/security prime led people to recommend harsher bonds for an illegal prostitute when they were reminded of death, whereas a benevolence prime counteracted this effect. In Study 4 a help prime, combined with MS, increased peoples helpfulness. Discussion focuses briefly on how these findings inform both terror-management theory and the focus theory of normative conduct.

Competitive Victimhood as a Response to Accusations of Ingroup Harm Doing

Accusations of unjust harm doing by the ingroup threaten the groups moral identity. One strategy for restoring ingroup moral identity after such a threat is competitive victimhood: claiming the ingroup has suffered compared with the harmed outgroup. Men accused of harming women were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared with women (Study 1), and women showed the same effect when accused of discriminating against men (Study 3). Undergraduates engaged in competitive victimhood with university staff after their group was accused of harming staff (Study 2). Study 4 showed that the effect of accusations on competitive victimhood among high-status group members is mediated by perceived stigma reversal: the expectation that one should feel guilty for being in a high-status group. Exposure to a competitive victimhood claim on behalf of ones ingroup reduced stigma reversal and collective guilt after an accusation of ingroup harm doing (Study 5).

A dual-motive model of scapegoating: Displacing blame to reduce guilt or increase control.

The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over ones responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicable. Three studies supported hypotheses derived from this dual-motive model. Framing a negative outcome (environmental destruction or climate change) as caused by ones own harmful actions (value threat) or unknown sources (control threat) both increased scapegoating, and these effects occurred indirectly through feelings of guilt and perceived personal control, respectively (Study 1), and were differentially moderated by affirmations of moral value and personal control (Study 2). Also, scapegoating in response to value threat versus control threat produced divergent, theoretically specified effects on self-perceptions and behavioral intentions (Study 3).

Of Trophies and Pillars: Exploring the Terror Management Functions of Short-Term and Long-Term Relationship Partners

Prior terror management research shows that mortality salience (MS) motivates both self-esteem striving and worldview bolstering. The present research examined these processes in the context of dating preferences. It was hypothesized that in short-term romantic contexts, MS-induced self-esteem striving motivates interest in dating a physically attractive other, whereas in long-term romantic contexts, MS-induced motives for worldview validation heighten interest in dating a same-religion other. Study 1 showed that in a short-term dating context, MS increased preference for an attractive but religiously dissimilar person, whereas in a long-term dating context, MS increased preference for a religiously similar, less attractive person. Study 2 clarified that MS motivates preference for attractive short-term partners for their self-enhancing properties rather than their potential sexual availability. Study 3 supported the theorized processes, showing that under MS, self-esteem-relevant constructs became spontaneously accessible in short-term dating contexts, whereas worldview-relevant constructs became spontaneously accessible in long-term dating contexts.

Defending a Coherent Autobiography: When Past Events Appear Incoherent, Mortality Salience Prompts Compensatory Bolstering of the Past's Significance and the Future's Orderliness

Drawing on terror management theory, we propose that maintaining a coherent autobiography protects the individual from mortality concerns by imbuing experience over time with significance and order. Two studies test whether mortality salience combined with a threat to autobiographical coherence (induced by an alphabetical organization of past events) prompts compensatory bolstering of the significance and orderliness of temporal experience. In Study 1, whereas exclusion-primed participants led to organize past events alphabetically perceived their past as less significant, mortality salient participants showed a compensatory boost in perceptions of their pasts significance. In Study 2, mortality salience and an alphabetic event organization led participants high in personal need for structure to parse their future into clearly defined temporal intervals. This research is the first to experimentally assess the role of existential concerns in peoples motivation to defend the significance and structure of their temporal experience against threats to autobiographical coherence.

On graves and graven images: A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of art

We present an existential account of the psychological function of artistic activity derived from terror management theory. From this perspective, artistic creation and response alleviate concerns with mortality by affording opportunities to bolster cultural belief systems that provide death-transcending meaning and significance. We review research showing that reminders of mortality exaggerate peoples responses (positive and negative) to artworks that bear on their conceptions of death, cultural ideologies and symbols, and bases of meaning. We also review research on the interplay between the motives for terror management and creative self-expression. We compare a TMT analysis to alternative accounts of arts function derived from uncertainty management theory (e.g., van den Bos, 2009) and the meaning maintenance model (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006). We conclude by recommending that future research examine whether immersive aesthetic engagement is psychologically beneficial because it provides temporary relief from the awareness of death.

Collectivism and the Meaning of Suffering

People need to understand why an instance of suffering occurred and what purpose it might have. One widespread account of suffering is a repressive suffering construal (RSC): interpreting suffering as occurring because people deviate from social norms and as having the purpose of reinforcing the social order. Based on the theorizing of Emile Durkheim and others, we propose that RSC is associated with social morality-the belief that society dictates morality-and is encouraged by collectivist (as opposed to individualist) sentiments. Study 1 showed that dispositional collectivism predicts both social morality and RSC. Studies 2-4 showed that priming collectivist (vs. individualist) self-construal increases RSC of various types of suffering and that this effect is mediated by increased social morality (Study 4). Study 5 examined behavioral intentions, demonstrating that parents primed with a collectivist self-construal interpreted childrens suffering more repressively and showed greater support for corporal punishment of children.

A Terror Management Perspective on the Creation and Defense of Meaning

There are at least two forms of meaning that people seek: everyday meaning, which involves structuring the environment into a series of recursive patterns and expectancies, and ultimate meaning, which involves imbuing one’s life with a sense of cosmic purpose. Terror management theory, rooted in the ideas of Ernest Becker, is better suited than other motivational accounts to explain why humans pursue ultimate meaning. According to the theory, people’s awareness of their impending death compels them to attain ultimate meaning, because only if the self is seen as having a transcendent purpose can it be seen as in some sense immortal. The authors review a variety of experimental findings derived from TMT suggesting that the potential for death-related anxiety causes people to create and defend sources of both everyday and ultimate meaning.

Monstrous Children as Harbingers of Mortality: A Psychological Analysis of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child

Images of deformed or malevolent children have a particular power to disturb us. To understand why this is the case, we must first acknowledge the popular view of children as innocent and good. This conception of children is a social construction that has grown in popularity in recent history. Since the eighteenth century, the rise of Enlightenment philosophies of education, as epitomized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, along with the blank-slate hypothesis of the British empiricists have generated idyllic images of children as dependent, uncorrupted, and precious in industrialized societies, a trend documented by Chris Jenks and Peter N. Stearns. The prototypic child of ‘‘Western’’ modernity is the opposite of evil. The contradiction between the evil child and the prototypic innocent child of modernity suggests that aversion to monstrous children can be accounted for partly by theories such as those of Noël Carroll and Julia Kristeva which trace horror to ambiguous stimuli that cannot be placed into clear, natural categories. In the context of the modern cultural understanding

An extension of source valence research using multiple discriminant analysis

Summary This study investigated the predictive capability of 14 source valence dimensions to dyadic communication contexts, a nominal level criterion variable. Friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and family contexts were examined. Multiple discrinimant analysis (MDA) models were used to evaluate field research utilizing questionnaire data from 194 Ss. Eleven of the 14 source valence dimensions met previous factor structures and were entered into the MDA equation. Nine of these 11 dimensions were significant predictors of dyadic communication contexts (p < .001).