Travis Proulx

Threat and Defense: From Anxiety to Approach

Abstract The social psychological literature on threat and defense is fragmented. Groups of researchers have focused on distinct threats, such as mortality, uncertainty, uncontrollability, or meaninglessness, and have developed separate theoretical frameworks for explaining the observed reactions. In the current chapter, we attempt to integrate old and new research, proposing both a taxonomy of variation and a common motivational process underlying people’s reactions to threats. Following various kinds of threats, people often turn to abstract conceptions of reality—they invest more extremely in belief systems and worldviews, social identities, goals, and ideals. We suggest that there are common motivational processes that underlie the similar reactions to all of these diverse kinds of threats. We propose that (1) all of the threats present people with discrepancies that immediately activate basic neural processes related to anxiety. (2) Some categories of defenses are more proximal and symptom-focused, and result directly from anxious arousal and heightened attentional vigilance associated with anxious states. (3) Other kinds of defenses operate more distally and mute anxiety by activating approach-oriented states. (4) Depending on the salient dispositional and situational affordances, these distal, approach-oriented reactions vary in the extent to which they (a) resolve the original discrepancy or are merely palliative; (b) are concrete or abstract; (c) are personal or social. We present results from social neuroscience and standard social psychological experiments that converge on a general process model of threat and defense.

The Five “A”s of Meaning Maintenance: Finding Meaning in the Theories of Sense-Making

Across eras and literatures, multiple theories have converged on a broad psychological phenomenon: the common compensation behaviors that follow from violations of our committed understandings. The meaning maintenance model (MMM) offers an integrated account of these behaviors, as well as the overlapping perspectives that address specific aspects of this inconsistency compensation process. According to the MMM, all meaning violations may bottleneck at neurocognitive and psychophysiological systems that detect and react to the experience of inconsistency, which in turn motivates compensatory behaviors. From this perspective, compensation behaviors are understood as palliative efforts to relieve the aversive arousal that follows from any experience that is inconsistent with expected relationships—whether the meaning violation involves a perceptual anomaly or an awareness of a finite human existence. In what follows, we summarize these efforts, the assimilation, accommodation, affirmation, abstraction and assembly behaviors that variously manifest in every corner of our discipline, and academics, more generally.

Is Dissonance Reduction a Special Case of Fluid Compensation? Evidence That Dissonant Cognitions Cause Compensatory Affirmation and Abstraction

Cognitive dissonance theory shares much in common with other perspectives that address anomalies, uncertainty, and general expectancy violations. This has led some theorists to argue that these theories represent overlapping psychological processes. If responding to dissonance and uncertainty occurs through a common psychological process, one should expect that the behavioral outcomes of feeling uncertain would also apply to feelings of dissonance, and vice versa. One specific prediction from the meaning maintenance model would be that cognitive dissonance, like other expectancy violations, should lead to the affirmation of unrelated beliefs, or the abstraction of unrelated schemas when the dissonant event cannot be easily accommodated. This article presents 4 studies (N = 1124) demonstrating that the classic induced-compliance dissonance paradigm can lead not only to a change of attitudes (dissonance reduction), but also to (a) an increased reported belief in God (Study 2), (b) a desire to punish norm-violators (Study 1 and 3), (c) a motivation to detect patterns amid noise (Study 3), and (d) polarizing support of public policies among those already biased toward a particular side (Study 4). These results are congruent with theories that propose content-general fluid compensation following the experience of anomaly, a finding not predicted by dissonance theory. The results suggest that dissonance reduction behaviors may share psychological processes described by other theories addressing violations of expectations.

Moderated Disanxiousuncertlibrium: Specifying the Moderating and Neuroaffective Determinants of Violation-Compensation Effects

abstraction , andthe subsequent iteration of the MMM incorporatedthis compensatory effort into our descriptive taxon-omy (Proulx & Heine, 2010). In later empirical work,we demonstrated that unrelated meaning violations,such as absurd art and mortality threats, increased astate need for simple structure (Proulx, Heine, & Vohs,2010)—as had previously been demonstrated follow-ing violations of personal control (Whitson & Galin-sky, 2008). We took these additional findings as furtherevidencethatdifferentviolationsarebestunderstoodinterms of expected associations, more generally, ratherthan as operating primarily in terms of a specified con-tent, whether it involves human mortality, surreal im-ages, or personal control (the latter account suggestedby Galinsky et al., this issue).Moreover, evidence that these violations bottleneckat a common arousal mechanism can be derived froma number of sources, including the “misattribution ofthe arousal” literature discussed in the target article:Compensation efforts following behavioral dissonance(Zanna & Cooper, 1974), visual anomalies (Proulx &Heine, 2008), and control violations (Kay, Moscov-itch, & Laurin, 2010) are all extinguished if peopleare able to attribute their arousal to a placebo pill, orif they are told that a placebo pill will render themimmune to arousal (Greenberg et al., 2003). More re-cently, Randles, Heine, and Santos (in press) demon-strated that compensatory affirmation following mor-tality reminders and surreal images was extinguishedif participants received an actual pain pill. In general, itappears that all of these violations bottleneck at someform of aversive arousal, with violation–compensationperspectives throughout the field of psychology posit-ing some mode of aversive arousal following the viola-tionagiven belieforgoal.What,then,isthissensation,and is it the same mode of arousal following any givenviolation? Is disequilibrium (Piaget, 1937/1954) thesame as behavioral dissonance (Festinger, 1957)? Isit the same as ideological dissonance (Jost, Pelham,Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003)? What about its similarityto the “potential terror” that arises from a reminder ofour own mortality (Pyszczynski et al., 1999)?Until we are able to specify this arousal be-yond a kind of “brain phlogiston,” our literature will

Extremism reduces conflict arousal and increases values affirmation in response to meaning violations

In the social psychological threat-compensation literature, there is an apparent contradiction whereby relatively extreme beliefs both decrease markers of physiological arousal following meaning violations, and increase the values affirmation behaviors understood as a palliative responses to this arousal. We hypothesize that this is due to the differential impact of measuring extremism on behavioral inhibition and approach systems following meaning violations, whereby extremism both reduces markers of conflict arousal (BIS) and increases values affirmation (BAS) unrelated to this initial arousal. Using pupil dilation as a proxy for immediate conflict arousal, we found that the same meaning violation (anomalous playing cards) evoked greater pupil dilation, and that this pupillary reaction was diminished in participants who earlier reported extreme beliefs. We also found that reporting extreme beliefs was associated with greater affirmation of an unrelated meaning framework, where this affirmation was unrelated to physiological markers of conflict arousal.

Lay Belief in Biopolitics and Political Prejudice

Building on psychological research linking essentialist beliefs about human differences with prejudice, we test whether lay belief in the biological basis of political ideology is associated with political intolerance and social avoidance. In two studies of American adults (Study 1: N = 288, Study 2: N = 164), we find that belief in the biological basis of political views is associated with greater intolerance and social avoidance of ideologically dissimilar others. The association is substantively large and robust to demographic, religious, and political control variables. These findings stand in contrast to some theoretical expectations that biological attributions for political ideology are associated with tolerance. We conclude that biological lay theories are especially likely to be correlated with prejudice in the political arena, where social identities tend to be salient and linked to intergroup competition and animosity.

The comfort of approach: self-soothing effects of behavioral approach in response to meaning violations

People maintain systems of beliefs that provide them with a sense of belongingness, control, identity, and meaning, more generally. Recent research shows that when these beliefs are threatened a syndrome of negatively valenced arousal is evoked that motivates people to seek comfort in their ideologies or other personally valued beliefs. In this paper we will provide an overview of this process and discuss areas for future research. Beginning with the neural foundations of meaning violations, we review findings that show the anterior cingulate cortex is responsible for detecting inconsistencies, and importantly, that this is experienced as aversive. Next, we evaluate the evidential support for a psychophysiological arousal response as measured by cardiography and skin conductance. We discuss how current theorizing proposes that subsequent behavioral approach ameliorates the negative arousal and serves as an effective, well-adapted coping response, but we also aim to further integrate this process in the existing threat-compensation literature. Finally, we speculate on whether approach motivation is likely to result when one feels capable of handling the threat, thereby incorporating the biopsychosocial model that distinguishes between challenge and threat into the motivational threat-response literature. We believe the current literature on threat and meaning has much to offer and we aim to provide new incentives for further development.

Meaning Maintenance Model: Introducing Soren to Existential Social Psychology

Existentialist theorists – most notably, Kierkegaard – laid out the blueprint for our current understanding of meaning. These theorists shared a common understanding of how meaning frameworks are acquired, along with the ways that people commonly respond to violations of these meaning frameworks. Our own perspective, the meaning maintenance model, draws from existentialist theory and current theoretical perspectives in experimental psychology. In this chapter, I will summarize this meaning maintenance perspective, along with the data that supports our central theoretical conceit: a general meaning maintenance motivation underlies much of the “violation-compensation” literature in social psychology.

Conceptual Creep as a Human (and Scientific) Goal

It is standard practice to assert that humans want to understand the world (Baumeister & Newman, 1994; Fiske, 2004; White, 1959). A potential hiccup in the motivation to understand is that a complete understanding of the world, with all of its twists and turns, social games, and subtle incentives, is nearly impossible. Rather than attend to every possible piece of information, people make the best judgments they can using a limited amount of resources (e.g., Fiske & Taylor, 1991). One way to make the best, “goodenough” judgments is quite similar to the “conceptual creep” identified by Nick Haslam (this issue) in his target article. People use prior knowledge about the world and generalize this knowledge to a new person or situation. This conceptual creep is no accident. Our brains are designed to consolidate concepts, and creep them until they fail to predict. By and large, this is a good thing. Information enters the brain—be it playing card features or political discourse—which is schematized and used to interpret subsequent experiences (Proulx, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012). When the expectations that follow from these schemas are violated, an essential process is carried out to respond to the anomaly. In begins where the schematic simulation and the incoming experiences collide—the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. An evoked related potential alerts to the anomaly, and action tendencies are initiated. First, there is anxiety and vigilance associated with the behavioral inhibition system. Then there are efforts to reinterpret the anomaly, revise expectation, or act on the incomprehensible to make it comprehensible and actionable. The key action, however, is action itself, rather than a paralyzing state of goalconflict that comes from not knowing or understanding, that eons of evolution have calibrated our brains to avoid (Gray & McNaughton, 2003). Anxious uncertainty feels bad, and motivates the certain action because millions of years of adaptive trial and error have discerned that action based on imperfect understanding is generally better than no action or a bad action. Conceptual creeping is what the brain does. The process of creeping concepts to imperfectly but pragmatically interpret the world can be seen across psychology. We have three examples.

QTIPS : Questionable theoretical and interpretive practices in social psychology

One possible consequence of ideological homogeneity is the misinterpretation of data collected with otherwise solid methods. To help identify these issues outside of politically relevant research, we name and give broad descriptions to three questionable interpretive practices described by Duarte et al. and introduce three additional questionable theoretical practices that also reduce the theoretical power and paradigmatic scope of psychology.