Mortality awareness collides with survival instincts to produce existential terror

Evidence

TMT begins with two simple observations. First, like other animals, humans have many biological systems directed toward keeping us alive. Second, humans also possess unique mental capacities, including self-awareness and the ability to contemplate the past and future, which enable us to be aware that these systems will ultimately fail: sooner or later, each of us will die. The awareness of personal mortality in an animal designed in so many ways to stay alive imposes an immense potential for anxiety upon humans and even threatens to overwhelm us with paralyzing terror. — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory, 12

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 91; People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 629; Accepting mortality reduces destructive unconscious death fears — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 786 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. #corroborates (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 42
• Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats #expands (0.78) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 91
• Survival adaptation to apparent death is the archaic root of human fear #corroborates (0.76) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 138
• Accepting mortality reduces destructive unconscious death fears #qualifies (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 786
• Being-towards-death frames mortality as the source of authentic existence #responds-to (0.74) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 933
• Blocking death anxiety at the psychological level misses its ontological-temporal structure. #complicates (0.73) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 264
• People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses #expands (0.72) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 629
• Mortality reminders increase perceived in-group entitativity, buffering death anxiety. #expands (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 257