Resting-state networks of believers and non-believers: An EEG microstate study.

Atheism and agnosticism are becoming increasingly popular, yet the neural processes underpinning individual differences in religious belief and non-belief remain poorly understood. In the current study, we examined differences between Believers and Non-Believers with regard to fundamental neural resting networks using EEG microstate analysis. Results demonstrated that Non-Believers show increased contribution from a resting-state network associated with deliberative or analytic processing (Microstate D), and Believers show increased contribution from a network associated with intuitive or automatic processing (Microstate C). Further, analysis of resting-state network communication suggested that Non-Believers may process visual information in a more deliberative or top-down manner, and Believers may process visual information in a more intuitive or bottom-up manner. These results support dual process explanations of individual differences in religious belief and add to the representation of non-belief as more than merely a lack of belief.

Long live A(me)rica! An examination of the interplay between nationalistic-symbolic immortality striving and belief in life after death.

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that the awareness of our eventual death is at odds with our evolved desire to live and that humans attempt to resolve this psychological conflict by investing in cultural worldviews that grant symbolic or literal immortality. The present studies examine the interplay between symbolic and literal immortality striving. Three studies show that, following a death reminder, only individuals who did not have a route to literal immortality (belief in an afterlife) increased how long they believe their culture (Canada in Studies 1 and 2, the United States in Study 3), will last by thousands of years. Study 4 demonstrated that this moderation effect cannot be explained by general religiosity; Study 5 conceptually replicated this finding using a different measure of perceived cultural longevity. Finally, Study 6 demonstrates that for those who were highly invested in their nation but did not believe in an afterlife, perceived cultural longevity was associated with decreased death anxiety. These results are consistent with the notion that people possess a primary path to immortality that follows directly from their worldview. The need for increased specificity in study design in TMT and the threat and defense literature more broadly is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Older Adults and the Fear of Death: The Protective Function of Generativity.

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that cultural worldviews function to allay concerns about human mortality. Preliminary research with older adults has indicated that seniors do not respond to death reminders in the same way as their younger counterparts. The purpose of the current study was to test a developmentally relevant construct that may buffer death anxiety in later life. It was hypothesized that Erikson's concept of generativity may encompass death-denying properties for older adults. One hundred and seventy-nine seniors were recruited to determine if subtle mortality salience inductions would lead participants to rate their own generativity as higher than after a blatant induction, or no induction, after controlling for pre-induction generativity. As expected, participants exposed to subtle death primes rated themselves as having higher levels of generativity than the other two groups after co-varying pre-induction generativity. Explanations are discussed in light of the literatures on TMT and generativity.

Finding death in meaninglessness: Evidence that death-thought accessibility increases in response to meaning threats.

The meaning maintenance model proposes that violations to one's expectations will cause subsequent meaning restoration. In attempts to distinguish meaning maintenance mechanisms from mechanisms of terror management, previous research has failed to find increased death-thought accessibility (DTA) in response to various meaning threats. The present research suggests that this failure may have resulted from methodological differences in the way researchers measured DTA. Studies 1a and 1b found that by replacing this method with a standard method employed when studying worldview and self-esteem threats, DTA increased in response to two different meaning violations. Study 2 found increased DTA, but only among individuals high in personal need for structure, when using this standard DTA procedure, but not when using the procedure taken from previous meaning maintenance studies. Interestingly, these studies did not find increased meaning restoration, so an additional study (Study 3) was designed to provide a theoretically informed examination of this null effect. A meaning restoration effect was observed after removing the standard DTA assessment procedure, but only among participants high in personal need for structure. Implications for the threat-compensation literature are discussed.

Terrorist attacks escalate in frequency and fatalities preceding highly lethal attacks.

Highly lethal terrorist attacks, which we define as those killing 21 or more people, account for 50% of the total number of people killed in all terrorist attacks combined, yet comprise only 3.5% of terrorist attacks. Given the disproportionate influence of these incidents, uncovering systematic patterns in attacks that precede and anticipate these highly lethal attacks may be of value for understanding attacks that exact a heavy toll on life. Here we examined whether the activity of terrorist groups escalates--both in the number of people killed per attack and in the frequency of attacks--leading up to highly lethal attacks. Analyses of terrorist attacks drawn from a state-of-the-art international terrorism database (The Global Terrorism Database) showed evidence for both types of escalation leading up to highly lethal attacks, though complexities to the patterns emerged as well. These patterns of escalation do not emerge among terrorist groups that never commit a highly lethal attack.

Using a bug-killing paradigm to understand how social validation and invalidation affect the distress of killing.

Clinical evidence demonstrates that killing among soldiers at war predicts their experience of long-lasting trauma/distress. Killing leads to distress, in part, due to guilt experienced from violating moral standards. Because social consensus shapes what actions are perceived as moral and just, we hypothesized that social validation for killing would reduce guilt, whereas social invalidation would exacerbate it. To examine this possibility in a laboratory setting, participants were led to kill bugs in an "extermination task." Perceptions of social validation/invalidation were manipulated through the supposed actions of a confederate (Study 1) or numerous previous participants (Study 2) that agreed or refused to kill bugs. Distress measures focused on trauma-related guilt. Higher levels of distress were observed when individuals perceived their actions as invalidated as opposed to when they perceived their actions as socially validated. Implications for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experienced by soldiers and the paradoxical nature of publicly expressing antiwar sentiments are discussed.

Preliminary support for links between media body ideal insecurity and women's shoe and handbag purchases.

Two studies examined the relationship between women's insecurity-arousing comparisons with female models and shoe/handbag ownership. Idealized media images appear capable of threatening some women's sense of attractiveness and it may be that as a result, accessorizing becomes particularly appealing because it helps increase physical attractiveness without drawing attention to one's figure, the object of the threatening comparisons. In Study 1 (N=922), a correlational study, the more women reported that they feel insecure when they see attractive female models, the more shoes they tended to own. In Study 2 (N=286), we manipulated whether women saw images of attractive female models or not. The more women exhibited insecurity following exposure to the images of attractive models, the more shoes and handbags they tended to own. In both studies, these effects did not hold for ownership of trousers, an item of clothing that draws attention toward one's body.

A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research.

Terror management theory (TMT) highlights the motivational impact of thoughts of death in various aspects of everyday life. Since its inception in 1986, research on TMT has undergone a slight but significant shift from an almost exclusive focus on the manipulation of thoughts of death to a marked increase in studies that measure the accessibility of death-related cognition. Indeed, the number of death-thought accessibility (DTA) studies in the published literature has grown substantially in recent years. In light of this increasing reliance on the DTA concept, the present article is meant to provide a comprehensive theoretical and empirical review of the literature employing this concept. After discussing the roots of DTA, the authors outline the theoretical refinements to TMT that have accompanied significant research findings associated with the DTA concept. Four distinct categories (mortality salience, death association, anxiety-buffer threat, and dispositional) are derived to organize the reviewed DTA studies, and the theoretical implications of each category are discussed. Finally, a number of lingering empirical and theoretical issues in the DTA literature are discussed with the aim of stimulating and focusing future research on DTA specifically and TMT in general.

Fighting death with death: the buffering effects of learning that worldview violators have died.

According to terror management theory, the annihilation of people who threaten one's worldview should serve the function of defending that worldview. The present research assessed this hypothesis. A sample of Christian participants read either a worldview-threatening news article reporting on the Muslimization of Nazareth or a nonthreatening article about the aurora borealis. Half of the participants in the worldview-threat condition were informed at the end of the article that a number of Muslims had died in a plane crash on their way to Nazareth. Although reading the threatening news article increased death-thought accessibility and worldview defense relative to reading the neutral article, these increases were not observed among participants who learned that a number of Muslims were dead. Implications for understanding protracted intergroup conflict are discussed.

Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates phobic and compulsive behaviors.

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that cultural worldviews and self-esteem function to buffer humans from mortality-related anxiety. TMT research has shown that important behaviors are influenced by mortality salience (MS) even when they have no obvious connection to death. However, there has been no attempt to investigate TMT processes in anxious responding. The present research examines that question. In Study 1, compared to a control condition, MS increased anxious responding to spider-related stimuli, but only for participants who met criteria for specific phobia. In Study 2, compared to an aversive control condition, MS increased time spent washing hands, but only for those scoring high on a measure of compulsive hand washing (CHW). In Study 3, compared to a different aversive control condition, MS increased avoidance of a social interaction, but only for those scoring high on a measure of social interaction anxiety. The relevance of TMT in anxious responding is discussed.

Is death really the worm at the core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility.

According to terror management theory, if the cultural worldview protects people from thoughts about death, then weakening this structure should increase death-thought accessibility (DTA). Five studies tested this DTA hypothesis. Study 1 showed that threatening Canadian participants' cultural values (vs. those of another culture) increased DTA on a word-fragment completion task. Study 2 showed that when participants could dismiss the threat, DTA remained low. Study 3 replicated the results of Study 1, but DTA was measured using a lexical decision task. Response latencies to death, negative, and neutral content were measured. Worldview threat increased DTA relative to accessibility for negative and neutral content. Study 4 showed that the DTA effect emerged independently of the arousal of anger or anxiety. Finally, Study 5 demonstrated that participants with a pro-creation (vs. pro-evolution) worldview had higher DTA after reading an anti-creation article. Discussion focused on theoretical implications and directions for further research.

Ageism and death: effects of mortality salience and perceived similarity to elders on reactions to elderly people.

The present research investigated the hypotheses that elderly people can be reminders of our mortality and that concerns about our own mortality can therefore instigate ageism. In Study 1, college-age participants who saw photos of two elderly people subsequently showed more death accessibility than participants who saw photos of only younger people. In Study 2, making mortality salient for participants increased distancing from the average elderly person and decreased perceptions that the average elderly person possesses favorable attitudes. Mortality salience did not affect ratings of teenagers. In Study 3, these mortality salience effects were moderated by prior reported similarity to elderly people. Distancing from, and derogation of, elderly people after mortality salience occurred only in participants who, weeks before the study, rated their personalities as relatively similar to the average elderly person's. Discussion addresses distinguishing ageism from other forms of prejudice, as well as possibilities for reducing ageism.

Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review.

Terror management theory (TMT; J. Greenberg, T. Pyszczynski, & S. Solomon, 1986) posits that people are motivated to pursue positive self-evaluations because self-esteem provides a buffer against the omnipresent potential for anxiety engendered by the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Empirical evidence relevant to the theory is reviewed showing that high levels of self-esteem reduce anxiety and anxiety-related defensive behavior, reminders of one's mortality increase self-esteem striving and defense of self-esteem against threats in a variety of domains, high levels of self-esteem eliminate the effect of reminders of mortality on both self-esteem striving and the accessibility of death-related thoughts, and convincing people of the existence of an afterlife eliminates the effect of mortality salience on self-esteem striving. TMT is compared with other explanations for why people need self-esteem, and a critique of the most prominent of these, sociometer theory, is provided.

Evidence that projection of a feared trait can serve a defensive function.

Two experiments tested the notion that allowing people to project a feared trait onto another individual would facilitate denial of the trait. In Study 1, participants were given feedback that they were high or low in repressed anger and were allowed to rate an ambiguous target on anger or not. Participants who received high (vs. low) anger feedback rated the target especially high on anger. In addition, participants who received high anger feedback and who were allowed to project their anger had the lowest anger accessibility on a word completion exercise. Study 2 replicated these basic findings using a different trait dimension (dishonesty) and a direct measure of denial (self-attributions of dishonesty). Specifically, in Study 2, participants who received high dishonesty feedback and who were allowed to project dishonesty reported having an especially low level of dishonesty. Discussion focused on the relationship between classic projection and other forms of psychological defense.

To belong or not to belong, that is the question: terror management and identification with gender and ethnicity.

The terror management prediction that reminders of death motivate in-group identification assumes people view their identifications positively. However, when the in-group is framed negatively, mortality salience should lead to disidentification. Study 1 found that mortality salience increased women's perceived similarity to other women except under gender-based stereotype threat. In Study 2, mortality salience and a negative ethnic prime led Hispanic as well as Anglo participants to derogate paintings attributed to Hispanic (but not Anglo-American) artists. Study 3 added a neutral prime condition and used a more direct measure of psychological distancing. Mortality salience and the negative prime led Hispanic participants to view themselves as especially different from a fellow Hispanic. Implications for understanding in-group derogation and disidentification are briefly discussed.