Determine whether each scenario is relevant or irrelevant to terror management theory (tmt).

Imagine this scenario: you are walking along the road toward the neighborhood kids and their lemonade stand on the corner; the thick crayon sign advertising the youthful afternoon venture just barely visible around the bend. You step off the curb and suddenly feel the exasperating pull of warm bubble gum connecting your shoe to the pavement. As you bend down to disengage gum from shoe, an approaching UPS truck catches an oil slick, veers abruptly in your direction, and bam!—your body is transformed into a Jackson Pollock painting on the road. Certainly not a pleasant picture: yet, each of us must navigate through our daily affairs aware that these kinds of scenarios can and do happen; or, at the very least, that later, if not sooner, death inevitability awaits.

According to terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), to function with relative equanimity in light of awareness of death, humans must be securely invested in a culturally derived view of reality that imbues the world with meaning, order, and permanence (cultural worldview); and, perceive themselves to be persons of significance in the cultural drama to which they subscribe (self-esteem). The protection afforded by the cultural worldview confers a sense that the world is stable, orderly, and potentially controllable. Therefore, when securely embedded in a cultural worldview, reminders of death should increase people’s desire for personal control. However, when faith in the worldview is tenuous, or a basic tenet of the cultural worldview is threatened, the world may seem chaotic rather than controllable. Under these circumstances mortality salience may instead engender less desire for personal control. This research was designed to test these ideas by examining the effects of mortality salience and worldview threat on desire for control as a function of neuroticism.

Terror management theory and research

Terror management theory (TMT; for a thorough exposition of the theory and the research it has generated, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991) is derived from the work of cultural anthropologist Becker, 1962/1971, Becker, 1973, Becker, 1975, who’s ideas were in turn based on a number of theorists, most notably Otto Rank, Sigmund Freud, Soren Kierkegaard, and Norman Brown. TMT posits that sophisticated cognitive abilities to think abstractly and

Study 1

The effects of mortality salience on desire for control should not be straightforward; but rather, should critically depend on the integrity of the individuals’ terror management structures. This reasoning is thus somewhat different from what might be otherwise predicted in the absence of terror management ideas. For example, one might predict that being more protected from threat would allow one to face threats with less need for the exertion of control. However, by our account, individuals

Study 2

A number of terror management studies have suggested the cultural worldview only provides protection in the face death-related concerns when the individual is able to sustain faith in its validity (e.g., Arndt & Greenberg, 1999). For this reason, following mortality salience, participants respond with vigorous defense of those beliefs (see Greenberg et al., 1997 for a review). Thus, if participants are exposed to a target who threatens their beliefs (but are not permitted to respond to that

General discussion

These studies offer an extension of terror management theory that facilitates understanding of two prevalent characteristics of interest to social and personality psychologists. Both neuroticism and the desire for control have received a wealth of attention in theory and research, yet somewhat surprisingly, these are some of the first studies to explicitly consider how they are connected. This research indicates that concerns with mortality and the success with which the individual is able to

Conclusion

Neuroticism, desires for control, and terror management have all been widely researched topics in psychology. Yet surprisingly given the conceptual overlap illustrated by this research, they have not been empirically studied in conjunction with one another. Despite what may have appeared to be an intuitive relationship between neuroticism and desire for control, the relationship is not straightforward. Nor is it a simple case of mortality salience increasing the desire for control. Rather,

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