The Varieties & Illusions of Religious Experience: Chapter 11, Terror Management Theory and Worldview Defense

i.
In The Future of an Illusion Freud famously argued that religious belief functions as a kind of existential defense mechanism. Faith represses, denies or hides existential realizations, realizations that cause us anxiety (e.g., I will die.). Rather than facing the fragility of existence I posit, through faith, a Benevolent Protector, a Heavenly Father, who cares for and protects me. According to Freud, the function of this belief is to provide, to use Ernest Becker's word, equanimity. Peace of mind. Existential fear is so disturbing it is pushed aside, allowing us to go on with our lives with a modicum of comfort. Our God is watching over us. We are not living in a hostile, indifferent universe.

It is now time to ask if Freud's analysis has any empirical support. Freud is making a claim, so what does the data say?

But with this claim we quickly encounter a problem: How could one possibly determine if faith was functioning as an existential defense mechanism for a given individual? You cannot simply poll people in churches asking them questions like "Do you believe in God because of your fundamental terror of death?" or "Do you feel your faith is an existential illusion?" Self-report techniques are woefully inadequate to test these dynamics. Further, the phenomenological approaches of Freud and William James do no better. Without some methodological innovations we are left with two rival claims regarding religious experience with no sure way to adjudicate between them. In the absence of evidence people will simply line up behind the claim that best suits them. Non-believers will align with Freud and religious believers will file in behind James.

But as we've noted, there have been methodological innovations developed by psychological researchers that can shed light on existential defense mechanisms. These techniques were developed in the late 1980s and early 90s as a part of what is called Terror Management Theory (TMT), a paradigm pioneered by Jeff Greenburg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski who were inspired by the work of Ernest Becker. Since the 80s, TMT has built up an impressive empirical record, with hundreds of studies and an array of innovative laboratory techniques. With the advent of TMT techniques it is now possible to formulate research questions that could shed light on the Freud/James debate. We can now examine existential defensiveness in the psychological laboratory. Here in Part 3 we'll review the first wave of data relevant to the Freud/James debate, seeing how their theories fare in the light of psychological research.

Whose theory, Freud or James, has the data on his side?

ii.
To understand the research in the chapters to come in this chapter we will give an overview of Terror Management Theory and it techniques. Importantly, we'll need to see how TMT manipulations function as tests of existential defensiveness as described by Ernest Becker, the TMT theorists, and Sigmund Freud.

Let's begin with the theoretical side of TMT. You will recall that Ernest Becker begins his analysis by noting that humans, being self-reflective creatures, are fully conscious of the fact that they are, minute-by-minute, growing closer to their eventual death. To quote Becker again on this subject:

The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it…But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days--that's something else.

Pictorially:

And, as Becker notes, this approach causes existential anxiety and terror:

How do we cope with this anxiety? Recall Becker's theory of cultural heroics. We cope with death anxiety by creating cultural worldviews that allow us to approach death via activities that take on symbolic, transcendent, and religious significance. We approach death by investing in cultural activities that give life meaning. As described in one early TMT study (Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989):

According to Becker, sophisticated human intellectual abilities lead to an awareness of human vulnerability and mortality, and this awareness creates the potential for overwhelming terror. As these abilities evolved, cultural worldviews began to emerge. The potential for terror put a press on evolving conceptions of reality such that any worldview that was to survive needed to provide a means of managing this terror. The conception of reality espoused by any given culture is thus the basis of a cultural anxiety-buffer that serves to protect the individual from the anxiety that results from awareness of his or her vulnerability and ultimate mortality.

According to the theory, however, protection from anxiety requires that one achieve a sense of value or self-esteem within the cultural context. This is because the culture promises security only to those who live up to the cultural standards of value...Thus, the cultural worldview provides a context within which an individual can conceive of him- or herself as a valuable participant in a meaningful world, and thus function with equanimity in the face of his or her ultimate mortality.

Pictorially, we don't approach death directly. Rather, we approach death through a cultural worldview:

When we approach death though the cultural worldview our death anxiety evaporates or, at the least, is momentarily repressed:

In the TMT lingo, culture is believed to function as an "anxiety buffer," protecting us from the "terror" of death.

iii.
To this point, TMT borrows heavily from Ernest Becker. One of the innovations of TMT is its particular analysis of our behavior when our cultural worldviews become threatened. Recall, Becker called cultural worldviews "vital lies." Well, what would happen if someone tried to deprive you of something like air or food? We'd act in a self-protective fashion. If culture is vital, existentially speaking, TMT predicts that we should protect and defend our cultural worldviews.
How might our cultural worldviews become existentially threatened? First, life might directly threaten us, bringing our physical vulnerability to mind (Rosenblatt et al., 1989):

Unfortunately, the cultural anxiety-buffer requires continual bolstering and defense against threat. In their daily lives, people are constantly confronted with reminders of the potential for pain, aversive experience, and death. One need only pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to encounter such reminders.

Even worse, the arbitrary nature of our cultural worldviews might become exposed. According to Becker our worldviews are "lies," culturally constructed fictions that seem unshakable and eternal but can, upon closer inspection, be exposed as a kind of mass delusion (e.g., "the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation"). This realization is destabilizing. We want our cultural worldviews to be sturdy, reliable, eternal and true. We don't want to be reminded that the projects that give our life "meaning" are fragile, fickle, socially constructed and arbitrary.

To be concrete, recall the time you first encountered a person from another world religion. The mere existence of this person creates a bit of an existential crisis. Here is a reasonable person whose view of the Ultimate is very different from your own. These differences suggest that what we consider most important in life (e.g., my faith) might not be true but the product of the whims of cultural history. But we don't typically reject our faith during our first encounter with a person from another world religion. Our worldviews are too vital for such a quick dismissal. So we dig in. We harden in our views, defending their truthfulness in the face of this existential assault. My God is real. Yours is false. TMT theorists call this response worldview defense:

[B]ecause cultural worldviews are essentially socially constructed fictions, they are always vulnerable to threat by incoming information and require constant social validation. Given that people rely on social consensus to instill confidence in their conceptions of reality, the diverse array of beliefs, values, and behaviors to which people are exposed make it difficult to sustain faith in any particular worldview or in one's place in it. Terror management theory, therefore, posits that people will respond positively to those who bolster their cultural anxiety-buffers and negatively to those who threaten their cultural anxiety-buffers. (Rosenblatt et al., 1989)

[T]he diverse array of beliefs and values that are encountered provide a reminder that one's worldview may not be valid in any absolute sense, highlighting the tenuous nature of the cultural anxiety-buffer and contributing to the need for ongoing bolstering and protection from threat. To the extent that people need to believe that one and only one conception of reality is ultimately correct, the existence of conceptions at variance with their own implies that someone must be mistaken. Given the vital terror management function served by these conceptions, we suggest that the existence of others with different worldviews therefore increases the individual's need for validation of his or her own worldview. (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, Veeder, Kirkland, & Lyon, 1990)

What the TMT researchers are suggesting is that out-group hostility and intolerance might be due to existential defensiveness. The reason we cling to ideologies is that they are performing an important existential function. We attack (verbally or physically) the out-group members who threaten the "vital lie." Engaging in worldview defense by attacking outsiders is much easier than rethinking one's existential predicament from scratch.

iv.
A second innovation of TMT is the mortality salience hypothesis. Specifically, how can we be sure that cultural worldviews are acting as existential anxiety-buffers? Worldview defense--attacking out-group members to protect existentially important beliefs--seems reasonable but how can we activate and measure it?

As noted above, we feel existentially threatened for two reasons: A direct confrontation with physical threats (e.g., a car accident, a cancer diagnosis) or the encounter with a cultural Other (e.g., a Christian encountering a Hindu). Thus a procedure for activating worldview defense recommends itself. Specifically, a standard TMT manipulation involves creating an existential threat via a death prime and then observing behavior with a cultural Other (e.g., someone with a different cultural worldview or someone who dismisses or violates my cultural values). This is frequently done through a mortality salience manipulation where participants in a study are asked to meditate upon their death (e.g., writing an essay about dying or watching autopsy footage). By making mortality salient TMT studies create a mild existential threat: Remember, you will die! After the mortality salience manipulation we can observe how people respond to other existentially threatening situations. For instance, we might see if participants treat an ideological Other fairly after a mortality salience manipulation.

The mortality salience hypothesis predicts that after undergoing a mortality salience experience participants, feeling existentially unsettled because of the death prime, would tend to shy away from another existential threats. For example, in the face of a mortality salience manipulation participants are predicted to engage in worldview defense if asked to encounter a cultural Other. In the face of death (the mortality salience prime) we respond by bolstering our worldview and attacking those who don't share it. As Greenberg et al. (1990) summarize the findings from one TMT study:

[T]he practical significance of our findings is clear. Mortality salience appears to increase in-group favoritism, rejection of those who are different, and authoritarian tendencies. This suggests that whenever events heighten mortality salience (e.g., newspaper accounts of catastrophes or violence in intergroup and interindividual conflicts), in-group solidarity, out-group derogation, nationalism, religious extremism, prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance of deviance are likely to escalate. More generally, the findings are consistent with the oft-stated contention that prejudice and hostility toward those who are different may be one particularly costly means of coping with fears and insecurities.

Perhaps an example might concretely illustrate the link between mortality salience and worldview defense. This example will also prove helpful in the chapters to come as it takes us inside the mechanics of a TMT study. Our example is from a study conducted by Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Chatel (1992). In one part of this large study Greenburg et al. had a group of American college students go though a standard TMT manipulation. Specifically, the participants were asked to write answers to two questions/prompts: "(a) describe the feelings that the thought of their own death arouses in them and (b) describe what they think will happen to them physically as they die and once they are dead." Control subjects wrote answers to innocuous prompts. After moving through either the control or mortality salient manipulations the participants were told that they were going to evaluate essays written by foreign students attending the university. The participants were told that their evaluations would help the researchers "content analyze the best of these essays and report the results in a paper about foreign views of America and American reactions to them." The students were then given two essays to evaluate.

The two essays were very different: "The pro-U.S. essay was very favorable to the United States, focusing on freedom, opportunities, and safety. The anti-U.S. essay was highly critical of the United States, focusing on economic inequities, emphasis on money, and lack of sympathy for people." That is, from a worldview defense standpoint, one essay (pro-America) was consistent with the students' own worldview. This essay bolstered and confirmed their worldview. By contrast, the anti-America essay undermined and attacked the worldview of the students.

The students were asked to evaluate each essay by rating the applicability of various negative (e.g., contemptible, hypocritical, obnoxious, arrogant) and positive (e.g., likable, humane, generous, kind) adjectives to the author of each essay.

The research question was this: How would the students in the mortality salience condition evaluate these essays in contrast to the control subjects? The mortality salience and worldview defense hypotheses suggest that in the face of death the participants would engage in worldview defense. That is, feeling existentially unsettled the participants would gravitate toward the essay that bolstered their worldview (the pro-America essay) and denigrate the author that attacked their worldview (the anti-America essay). By contrast, control subjects, feeling existentially more secure having not undergone a mortality salience manipulation, were predicted to be more objective and fair when evaluating the two authors.

What were the results of the study? Well, not surprisingly the students in both conditions tended to favor the pro-America author over the anti-America author. But importantly for our purposes the study also found that this bias was significantly strengthened by the mortality salience manipulation. Participants in the mortality salience condition were significantly more favorable toward the pro-America author and significantly more harsh toward the anti-America author. The only reasonable explanation for these findings is that the participants were engaging in worldview defense when they felt existentially threatened.

v.
The reason for going into the guts of a TMT study is that we can see how existential defense mechanisms are now being routinely studied in psychological laboratories across the world. Described simplistically, in these studies psychologists poke at the defense mechanism with a mortality salience manipulation and then look for predicted outcomes such as worldview defense. If we routinely see people defend cultural worldviews in the face of death we have relatively good evidence that cultural worldviews are engaged in death repression. Amazingly, the very abstract ideas of Ernest Becker encountered in the last chapter are now being tested empirically in the laboratory. And by and large the data seem to confirm Becker's theory: Culture worldviews and the self-esteem we attain by succeeding within them are intimately involved with death repression.

What does TMT have to do with the Freud/James debate? Recall, Freud argued in The Future of an Illusion that religion functions as an existential narcotic. In the language of TMT religious faith functions as a cultural "anxiety buffer." If so, then it is a relatively straightforward process to assess religious belief in a TMT study. That is, do religious believers engage in worldview defense? In the face of death would religious believers denigrate people from other world religions? Because if they do then some solid empirical evidence would line up behind Freud. Freud would have laboratory results that supported his notion that the function of religious belief is existential consolation.

In the next chapter we examine the outcome of the very first (and still one of the few) studies that examined religious belief with a mortality salience manipulation. We'll discover that, 63 years after the publication of The Future of an Illusion, Freud's theory suddenly began looking a whole lot better.