Terror Management Theory: A Summary
The Theory All mammals, including humans, experience terror when faced with the threat of death. Upon seeing a predator, an animal in the wild enters a state of fight, flight, or freezing. Similarly, if my car begins to spin out of control or if I wake up to discover a suspicious lump, I will have this same response. But unlike other mammals, humans are capable of experiencing this terror even when death is not imminent. I can be young and healthy, but simply contemplating my eventual demise can be enough to fill me with terror (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2015, location 208). This can create significant problems. Having this fight-flight-freeze response in the face of an imminent threat is adaptive, but having it in the absence of such a threat can be debilitating, preventing one from carrying out the activities required for healthy, productive living. According to terror management theory (TMT), humans learned to solve this problem by creating cultural worldviews. A cultur