People pursue self-destructive trends most avidly when death thoughts are unconscious
Evidence
Unfortunately, many of the things that are trendy and boost our self-esteem are not good for our health. And, ironically, we are more likely to do these things when thoughts of death are on the fringes of our consciousness. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 661
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The cerebral self constitutes mortality internally without achieving self-knowledge — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 1038
Related
- Subtle death reminders drive worldview defense, self-esteem striving, and unhealthy behavior. (similarity 0.84)
- Knowing how death awareness drives defenses enables more self-determined choices (similarity 0.84)
- Worldview and self-esteem defense is bidirectional with death-thought accessibility. (similarity 0.81)
- Adults respond to death reminders with mundane distraction and consumption (similarity 0.81)
- Death’s most powerful influence operates unseen in normal life (similarity 0.81)
- People are generally oblivious to death yet it shapes their experience (similarity 0.81)
- High self-esteem and optimism enable constructive responses to death threats. (similarity 0.81)
- Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem (similarity 0.81)
- Self-esteem is embodied, not just mental, and blunts death-anxiety (similarity 0.81)
- Threatening cherished beliefs brings thoughts of death closer to awareness (similarity 0.80)
- Death-terror drives art, religion, war, consumerism, and fame-seeking (similarity 0.79)
- Designed to banish death thoughts, rationalizations defer health behaviors indefinitely. (similarity 0.79)
- No account of human behavior is complete without the awareness of death (similarity 0.79)
- Conscious and unconscious death thoughts trigger different defense systems (similarity 0.78)