Effective health campaigns must address both proximal and distal death defenses simultaneously

Evidence

When thoughts of death are conscious, advantageous proximal reactions can be fostered by bolstering an individual’s sense of optimism and efficacy for healthy behavior. For example, immediately after a graphic depiction of AIDS as a pernicious and fatal disease that also highlights the importance of early detection and the efficacy of pharmacological regimes, and while death thoughts are conscious, people should be more willing to be tested for HIV as a proximal defense. However, if people do not think HIV testing is likely to help keep them alive, they are more likely to deploy ill-fated proximal defenses like denying that they are at risk or using drugs and alcohol to purge death thoughts from consciousness. Moreover, moments later, when death thoughts are on the fringes of consciousness and distal defenses are engaged, a heavy-handed portrayal of AIDS could be ineffective or counterproductive for people who derive self-esteem from their sexual prowess. Half an hour after watching an AIDS prevention video, people like basketball great “Wilt the Stilt” Chamberlain, who notoriously claims to have slept with more than twenty thousand women, may ironically become more inclined to have unprotected sex with multiple partners as a distal reaction to bolster self-esteem and keep death on the fringes of consciousness. The best way to go, then, for health campaigns that make people think about death is to capitalize on both healthy proximal and distal reactions. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 669

Categorization

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