Terror Management Theory - Background

Background

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.

Ernest Becker, 1973

Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker asserts in his 1973 book The Denial of Death that humans, as intelligent animals, are able to grasp the inevitability of death. They therefore spend their lives building and believing in cultural elements that illustrate how to make themselves stand out as individuals and give their lives significance and meaning. Death creates an anxiety in humans; it strikes at unexpected and random moments, and its nature is essentially unknowable, causing people to spend most of their time and energy to explain, forestall, and avoid it.

Becker expounded upon the previous writings of Sigmund Freud, Søren Kierkegaard, Norman O. Brown, and Otto Rank. According to clinical psychiatrist Morton Levitt, Becker replaces the Freudian preoccupation with sexuality with the fear of death as the primary motivation in human behavior.

People desire to think of themselves as beings of value and worth with a feeling of permanence, a concept in psychology known as self-esteem, that somewhat resolves the realization that people may be no more important than any other living thing. Becker refers to high self-esteem as heroism:

the problem of heroics is the central one of human life, that it goes deeper into human nature than anything else because it is based on organismic narcissism and on the child's need for self-esteem as the condition for his life. Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning.

The terror management theory suggests that peoples’ behavior is dependent upon fear; thus, support for the theory can be seen by examining peoples' reactions to death and their fear of death. Research not only shows peoples’ reactions to the fear of death, but to suffering as well. Death was welcomed in some cases, by patients and hospice volunteers, if it meant an end to suffering.

The reasons behind peoples' decisions regarding their own health can be explored through a terror management health model, which has three implications. First, consciousness of death leads people to try to remove all thoughts of death. Secondly, unconscious death thoughts can result in actions taken upon self-esteem as opposed to bodily health. Thirdly, preoccupation with one's physical body can hinder decision-making abilities regarding healthful behavioral choices.