Are You Terrified? Is it Because You are Different?

“There’s more money than ever before, and more people online, and you can’t go on the Internet without running into one of these things. Social media is for people to have their own conversations, but these groups have their own money and until we have some kind of campaign finance reform that sticks, we are going to see more and more of these kinds of campaigns.”

-- Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government transparency

Well known is the fact that people have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. The few who become the focal point of such desire offer the many a cause, a new faith to follow. They few keep their words vague but full of promise; they emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. They give their new disciples rituals to perform and ask them to make sacrifices on their behalf. Humans are motivated to quell the potential for terror inherent in the human awareness of vulnerability and mortality by investing in cultural belief systems (or worldviews) that imbue life with meaning, and the individuals who subscribe to them with significance (or self-esteem).

Terror Management Theory (TMT) attempts to explain this reality and has generated empirical research into not just the nature of self-esteem motivation and prejudice, but also a host of other forms of human social behavior. To date, over 300 studies conducted in over a dozen countries have explored such topics as aggression, stereotyping, needs for structure and meaning, depression and psychopathology (e.g., phobias), political preferences, creativity, sexuality and attraction, romantic and interpersonal attachment, self-awareness, unconscious cognition, martyrdom, religion, group identification, disgust, human-nature relations, physical health, risk taking, and legal judgments.

Terror Management Theory was proposed in 1986 by social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszcynski, and Sheldon Solomon. The theory was inspired by the writings of cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, (wrote “Denial of Death”), and was initiated by two relatively simple questions:

1) Why do people have such a great need to feel good about themselves?

2) Why do people have so much trouble getting along with those different from themselves?

Most empirical research for TMT relies on two hypotheses. First, the mortality salience hypothesis centers on the idea that if a psychological structure protects against mortality concerns, reminding people of death should increase their reliance on the structure. Secondly, the anxiety buffer hypothesis explains that strengthening this structure should reduce anxiety in response to mortality salience. Both of these concepts hinge on the presence of self-esteem, which enables individuals to feel they play an important role within these psychological structures. In 1992, this link with self-esteem was tested on college students who participated by reacting to short video clips, after which the experimenters provided them with personality assessments. The assessments presented either a positive or neutral evaluation, and students later completed the “Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale” to assure self esteem had been raised. Students were then made aware of their own mortality by watching a video of an autopsy and electrocution, and as expected, those students who had received neutral personality evaluations reported higher levels of anxiety. This experiment supported the idea that self-esteem reduces anxiety as individuals believe they are a vital part of their own worldview.

In today’s world, terror management has played out with events like September 11th. Pyszczynski suggests that TMT could explain why people have trouble interacting with people from different cultures or political ideologies or religions. They explain that if culture serves as a death-denying function, then the existence of the people who are culturally different undermines our own defense against the fear of death. In this sense, people feel they must be able to rely on their own personal worldview. It is this very worldview that, “From a TMT perspective it shields individuals from fears surrounding death by enabling them to view themselves as valuable members of an eternal cultural reality that exists beyond the point of their own physical death” (Pyszczynski et al., 1999).

In light of the vitriolic nature of the 2012 presidential campaign and the role the media plays in its heightening, consider the ads that have been paid for and approved of by both camps. Ads from the Obama and Romney campaigns and their allies are usually targeted at television viewers in battleground states. Most of them end up online, where anyone can watch and share them. They've included a Romney ad accusing Obama of gutting the federal welfare-to-work program, to which the Obama campaign responded with an ad that called it "blatantly false."

Another of Obama's most popular ads online is one that attacks Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, for his plans to cut entitlement programs. A Romney ad that has gotten a lot of hits lately is one that accuses the president of declaring war on religion.

But the steelworker and job-creation ads stand out because they represent the more nefarious aspect of the trend: they aren’t truthful, and they aren’t directly connected to the candidates themselves -- even though Obama and Romney have run their own ads accusing each other of dirty campaigning.

The steel worker spot, titled, "Understands," was made by a pro-Obama group called Priorities USA Action and it features Joe Soptic, who was laid off from a company owned by Bain Capital, the venture firm co-founded by Romney. Soptic tells the story about his wife dying from cancer after losing health benefits, making it seem as if the loss of his job had something to do with it. But as many fact-checking organizations have pointed out, the plant was closed in 2001, two years after Romney left Bain.

The job-creation ad, called “Another Month,” was made by the pro-Romney Restore Our Future. It splices together video of Obama making jokes and comments like “we tried our plan and it worked,” which FactCheck.org said “twists his words way out of context.”

The current political ads, and the angry response to them by their targets, have raised the level of vitriol in what is quickly becoming a more negative campaign. The reason is, it works. Why does it work?

How is TMT evidenced in not only the ads but the day-to-day interaction voters have with one another?

Does TMT play a role in the current divisiveness we see in relationships among friends and family as they find differences in the values that prompt one to vote for a different candidate than another?

How can we manage such vitriol, if it can be managed and if it cannot, how can we choose to remain free from its impact?

Thoughts?