Terror Management Theory: The existential pressure of diversity

Jakob Sverre Løvstad

CTO Seema

26 March 2025

Let me start by saying that this article is part of an ambition to write a little more about facets of the diversity field that people out there may find interesting. As we at Seema keep pointing out, it's an extensive subject. And it's a lot to expect people to have the time to properly familiarise themselves with it (it quickly becomes a few years of study). But perhaps it's possible to devote a few minutes of attention here and there to understand a little more about it all. The focus today is "Terror Management Theory" (TMT), a research tradition in social psychology/existential psychology with about 40 years of empirical research behind it. And this is what I wrote my master's thesis on at Blindern, so the topic is close to my heart.

The start of TMT came with a man named Ernest Becker who in 1973 published the book "The Denial of Death". This was a pure work of thought with deep psychoanalytical roots, where Becker essentially claimed that since humans are the only mammals that are actually conscious and can reflect on their own death, it must also have a major impact on us psychologically. Funnily enough, Becker was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the book, but when posthumous. Fate is undeniably ironic.

Fortunately for the field of psychology, the thinking didn't stop with Becker. Three researchers named Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon and Tom Pyszczynski started work to see if the assumptions about the effects of death were actually true and could be scientifically verified. In practice, what they came up with was the term "mortality salience", or perhaps death awareness in Norwegian. This is not quite the same as death anxiety. TMT claims (with a lot of empirical background) that death awareness is a general phenomenon that affects us subconsciously, without us necessarily feeling cold sweats, high pulse and other things that can typically be called "anxiety" (there are also those who have existential anxiety at that level, but that becomes a slightly different topic).

Furthermore, the triggers for death awareness are often very subtle in all trials. There is no big red sign screaming "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE" present. Rather, researchers have used small influences such as letting people see sentences with certain death-related words, letting them walk past a cemetery, making them see images that may remind them of people's fleeting existence and so on. There is very little transparency, and participants in the experiments are not told what they are actually taking part in or what the purpose of the experiment is.

So what is the effect of becoming aware, even very subtly, of your own death? Well, the aforementioned three researchers say it best themselves in their article "Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory":

"Far and away the most oft-tested implication of TMT is that reminders of death (mortality salience, MS) should increase one's need for the protection provided by one's worldview, self-esteem, and close attachments and therefore increase one's commitment to or striving for them. Consequently, MS is predicted to lead to more positive responses to anyone or anything that bolsters them and more negative responses to anyone or anything that threatens them."

In short, the effect is that you stick to your own kind and preferably those who think the same as you do. We seek security, pure and simple. Or as Becker originally pointed out: We need to find a way to protect ourselves from the fact that we are, and preferably deny that we are, transient.

This is obviously not good news for practising openness to diversity. For example, you become more turned against nationalism (there is a lot of research on TMT and politics), your own religion and the like. As Pyszczynski says in "Terror Management of Fear, Hate, Political Conflict, and Political Violence: A Review":

"...one early study showed that death reminders increased liking for a person who praised the United States and decreased liking for a person who criticised it."

"...a large body of evidence showing that measures of dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, needs for order, structure and closure, fear of threat and loss, and death anxiety correlated positively with adherence to conservative ideology."

Research into TMT started long before the internet became a thing (1980s). At that time, you often had to trigger people as previously mentioned to get an effect. But in today's world, there are far stronger triggers all around us from morning to night. Through digital media, we are bombarded with annoying existential reminders. We can even follow death and misery from a first-person perspective if we want.

In short, the effects of TMT are more relevant than ever before in the history of the world. And in this, without much control, we become more sceptical of everything and everyone that is different, or disturbs our own opinions and attitudes.

Taking a deep breath, being observant of our own responses and choosing differently is something we need to actively work on if the profession is to continue to succeed. I don't mean to be a source of doom and gloom here, but it all starts with at least being aware of what's going on inside us.

And if the article appeals to your taste, there will be more easily digestible material from this side.