Collaborative Research: Assessing the Terror Management Analysis of Affective, Cognitive, and Motivational Factors in Mortality Salience Effects

该项目扩展了恐怖管理理论的研究，这是对人类行为的广泛分析，直接关系到了解最近种族和群体间冲突和暴力增加的趋势所涉及的心理过程。 该理论认为，人类意识到生命的脆弱性和死亡的不可避免性所产生的潜在焦虑，驱使人们抓住基于文化的世界观，使他们能够将生命视为有序，有意义和永久的，并将自己视为这一有意义的现实的宝贵贡献者。 恐怖管理理论认为，与国家、种族、宗教和其他文化机构的联系可以管理由于意识到人类状况的不稳定性而产生的潜在焦虑。 这项新的研究计划将使用当代方法来评估有意识和无意识的过程，以进一步了解人类倾向的基本动机，情感和认知过程，通过投资和捍卫我们自己的信仰体系和自尊模式来科普恐惧，以及这些过程在人类冲突中发挥的作用。 其中一组研究将探讨潜在的和无意识的焦虑在这些过程中的作用。 第二组将研究保护人们免受这种焦虑的信仰体系的认知结构，以及信仰体系和意识形态的无意识激活在促进群体间偏见和冲突中所起的作用。第三组将探讨对死亡的关注如何与其他存在问题相关，例如对确定性，结构，意义的需求，以及对生命和现实本质的基本问题的简单答案。 最后一组将探讨如何恐怖管理的关注互动与方法的动机，导致改变和现有的信仰和价值观体系的增长。

This project expands the study of terror management theory, a broad analysis of human behavior that is directly relevant to understanding the psychological processes involved in recent trends toward increased ethnic and intergroup conflict and violence. The theory proposes that the potential for anxiety engendered by the human awareness of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death drives people to grasp onto culturally based conceptions of the world that enable them to view life as orderly, meaningful and permanent, and themselves as valuable contributors to this meaningful reality. Terror management theory suggests that connections to nations, ethnicities, religions, and other cultural institutions function to manage the potential for anxiety that results from awareness of the precarious nature of the human condition. This new program of research will use contemporary methods for assessing conscious and non-conscious processes to further our understanding of the basic motivational, emotional, and cognitive processes underlying the human inclinations to cope with fear by investing in and defending our own belief systems and modes of self-esteem striving, and the role that such processes play in human conflict. One set of studies will explore the operation of potential and unconscious anxiety in these processes. A second set will examine the cognitive architecture of the belief systems that protect people from this anxiety and the role that unconscious activation of belief systems and ideologies play in promoting inter-group bias and conflict. A third set will explore how concerns about death relate to other existential issues such as the needs for certainty, structure, meaning, and simple answers to basic questions about life and the nature of reality. The final set will explore how terror management concerns interact with approach motivation in leading to change and growth in existing systems of belief and values.