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The Dual Process Model of Defense Against Conscious and Unconscious Death-related
Thought: The Mechanics of Terror Management
Tom Pyszczynski
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Jeff Greenberg
University of Arizona
Sheldon Solomon
Skidmore College
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Abstract
Terror management theory posits two distinct processes that people use to cope with
conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts, respectively. When consciously
thinking about death, people employ proximal defenses that deal with the problem of
death in a more or less rational manner, by distorting their vulnerability (e.g., since my
grandmother lived to be 99, I don't have anything to worry about for another 70 years or
so), making promises to do things that reduce their vulnerability (e.g., losing weight,
giving up unhealthy vices, getting more exercise), or suppressing such thoughts by
distracting themselves from the problem. However, when death-related thoughts are on
the fringes of consciousness -- highly accessible but not in current focal attention -people use distal terror management defenses to cope with the potential for anxiety that
the accessibility of such thoughts gives rise to. Distal defenses entail the bolstering or
defense of one's cultural worldview and self-esteem. Although such defensive responses
bear no obvious rational connection to the problem of death, by virtue of early
socialization experiences, they provide protection by enabling the individual to see him
or herself as a person of value living in a meaningful world. Distal terror management
defenses emerge when thoughts of death are highly accessible but not in current focal
attention and they function to reduce the accessibility of death-related thoughts.
Converging lines of evidence providing support for this conceptualization will be
discussed, with emphasis on recent studies documenting the role that the potential for
anxiety that death related thoughts typically entail plays in this process and the automatic
activation of worldview-relevant cognitions that occurs when thoughts of death become
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accessible. The relevance of this conceptualization to defenses against other types of
threats will be discussed.
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A Dual Process Model of Defense Against Conscious and Unconscious Death-related
Thought: The Mechanics of Terror Management
The proposition that people are often unaware of the forces that lead them to do
the things they do is one of the oldest, most widely accepted, but at times most
controversial ideas in the history of psychology. Since the psychology’s earliest days, the
popularity of accounts of behavior that emphasize unconscious motivational forces has
waxed and waned. Although virtually all psychologists probably agree that people are
typically not aware of all the forces and processes that determine their behavior, the idea
that people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are driven by powerful fears and needs of
which they are unaware is considerably more controversial. Building on earlier
theorizing in existential and psychoanalytic psychology, Terror Management Theory
(TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski,
1991) posits that a very deeply rooted fear of death lies at the root of a great deal of
human motivation. Over the last 15 years, a substantial literature, consisting of over 170
separate studies conducted in at least nine different countries, has supported a variety of
TMT hypothesis (for reviews, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997;
Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). This research has shown that thoughts of
death affect a broad range of human behavior, but that these effects occur in the absence
of consciously experienced affect and that they occur primarily when death-related
thoughts are on the fringes of consciousness. The purpose of this chapter is to explore
the cognitive mechanisms through which death-related thought produces its effect, to
more clearly explicate the role that affect, in particular implicit affect plays in these
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processes, and to review the empirical evidence supporting our conceptualization of these
processes.
Terror Management Theory and Research: An Overview
TMT posits that the juxtaposition of an instinctive desire for continued life with
awareness of the inevitability of death creates the potential for paralyzing terror, or deathrelated anxiety. The theory originally posited that this potential for anxiety is managed by
a cultural anxiety-buffer, consisting of: (a) a cultural worldview, which provides an
explanation for existence, standards through which individuals can attain a sense of
personal value, and the promise of literal or symbolic immortality to those who live up to
these standards, and (b) self-esteem, which is acquired by believing in the worldview and
living up to its standards. Mikulincer, Florian, and Hirschberger (2003) have recently
argued, and provided compelling evidence, that close personal relationships also serve a
terror management function. Indeed, from the first statement of the theory (Greenberg et
al., 1986) we have argued that the anxiety-buffering properties of self-esteem and cultural
worldviews develop out of early attachments to parents and primary caretakers forged
early in life. Thus we concur with Mikulincer et al’s suggestion that close personal
relationships be considered an additional component of the terror management system.
Because all three of these anxiety-buffering structures are fragile social constructions,
they require ongoing consensual validation for effective defensive functioning. Because
of the vital roles that self-esteem, cultural worldviews, and close relationships play in
protecting people from deeply rooted fears, much social thought and behavior is oriented
toward maintaining them and defending them against threats. From the perspective of
TMT, a diverse array of social behaviors, viewed by other theories as conceptually
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distinct, can be profitably viewed as functioning to maintain the integrity of this cultural
anxiety-buffer.
To date, over 170 separate experiments, conducted in nine different countries
have supported TMT hypotheses. The anxiety-buffer hypothesis states that, to the extent
that a psychological structure provides protection against anxiety, then strengthening that
structure should make one less prone to anxiety in response to threats. Tests of the
anxiety-buffer hypothesis have shown that: (a) increasing self-esteem reduces selfreported anxiety in response to graphic reminders of death, physiological arousal in
response to the threat of electric shock, and death-denying defensive distortions (e.g.,
Greenberg, Pyszczynski, et al., 1992; Greenberg, Solomon, et al., 1991) and (b)
increasing self-esteem reduces the increased defense of the worldview, self-esteem
striving and delayed increase in the accessibility of death-related themes that normally
occurs in response to death reminders (e.g., Harmon-Jones, Simon, et al., 1994). Most
recently we have found that although a self-esteem boost generally reduces mortality
salience-induced derogation of a target who threatens one’s worldview, it does not do so
if the values upon which that self-esteem boost was based are threatened; this provides
further evidence linking self-esteem to cultural values by showing that self-esteem loses
its anxiety-buffering effects when the values from which it is derived are threatened.
The mortality salience (MS) hypothesis states that, to the extent that a
psychological structure provides protection against anxiety, then reminding people of the
source of their anxiety should lead to increased need for that structure, and thus more
positive reactions to entities that support it and more negative reactions to entities that
threaten it. Tests of the MS hypothesis have shown that reminding people of their
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mortality leads to increased defense of the worldview, in the form of more positive
reactions to those who uphold it and more negative reactions to those who threaten it.
Specifically, MS has been shown to lead to: (a) harsher evaluations of moral
transgressors and more favorable evaluations of those who uphold moral standards (e.g.,
Rosenblatt et al., 1989); (b) more favorable evaluations of those who praise the culture
and more negative evaluations of those who criticize it (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1994); ©
more favorable evaluations of ingroup members and more negative evaluations of
outgroup members (Greenberg et al., 1990); (d) increased acceptance of others with
worldviews different from one’s own among those committed to the value of tolerance,
especially when that value has recently been primed (e.g., Simon et al., 1994); (e)
increased discomfort and difficulty performing behavior counter to cultural norms (e.g.,
Greenberg et al., 1994); (f) avoidance of self-focusing stimuli (Arndt et al., 199x); (g)
increased perceptions of social consensus for one’s attitudes (e.g. Pyszczynski et al.,
1996); (h) increased aggression against attitudinally dissimilar others (e.g., McGregor et
al., 199x); (i) increased pursuit of optimal distinctiveness in response to information that
threatens one’s uniqueness or normality (e.g., Simon et al., 199x); (j) increased liking for
stereotypic members of minority groups and decreased liking for counter-stereotypic
members of minority groups (e.g., Schimel et al., 199x); (k) increased imposition of
cognitive structure in social information, in the form of increased primacy, balance, and
heuristic effects (Dechesne & Kruglanski, in press; Landau, et al., 2003); (l) increased
avoidance of pictures of spiders among spider phobics and more thorough hand-washing
among obsessive-compulsives; and a variety of diverse other effects.
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Our recent research has also shown that MS increases self-esteem striving.
Specifically, MS has been found to lead to: (a) increased identification with one’s body
among those with high body self-esteem and decreased appearance monitoring among
those with low body self-esteem (Goldenberg et al., 2000); (b) increases in white
participants’ sympathy for someone who expressed white pride (e.g., Greenberg et al.,
200x), (c) increased positive attitudes and charitable contributions toward valued
charities (Jones et al., 200x), (d) increased identification with valued ingroups but
decreased identifications with ingroups when they are framed negatively (Arndt et al.,
200x). Most recently, we have found that although MS generally increases the selfserving tendency to perceive positive personality feedback as especially accurate, this
effect is eliminated if participants are provided supposed scientific evidence that there is
life after death (Dechesne, et al., in press).
Other recent work has shown that mortality concerns affect attitudes toward sex,
the body, and disgust. The core idea is that our physical animal nature is threatening
because it reminds us that we are mortal, and that many cultures therefore separate
humankind from the rest of nature and attempt to imbue our creaturely aspects with
abstract symbolic meaning. This work has shown that: (a) MS leads to negative reactions
to an essay emphasizing our similarities with other animals (Goldenberg et al., 2001,
Study 2); (b) MS leads to increased disgust reactions to reminders of animality
(Goldenberg et al., 2001, Study 2); (c) MS leads to low rating of the appeal of physical
aspects of sex among high neurotics and among people who have been reminded of our
similarities to other animals (Goldenberg et al, 2000, in press); (d) salience of physical
aspects of sex leads to increased death-thought accessibility among high neurotics and
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people who have been reminded of our similarities to other animals; inducing subjects to
think about romantic love eliminates these effects (Goldenberg et al, 2000, in press); (e)
MS intensifies sex-typical responses to thoughts of emotional and sexual infidelity
(Goldenberg et al., in press), and (f) MS leads to more positive evaluations of attractive
women among men, but more negative reactions to the same women if they are dressed
in a sexually provocative way (Goldenberg et al., 2003).
Research suggests that the effects of MS are specific to the problem of death. MS
has been typically operationalized by open-ended questions about one's own death, but
similar effects have been found with fear of death scales, proximity to a funeral home,
and subliminal death primes. Parallel conditions in which subjects contemplate other
aversive events, such as giving a speech, taking or failing an exam in an important class,
intense physical pain, being paralyzed, social exclusion, life after graduation from
college, or to actually experiencing a failure on a supposed IQ test do not produce parallel
effects, even though these other conditions sometimes produce negative affect. Although
McGregor et al. (200x) have recently reported that manipulations of existential
uncertainty, involving thoughts of major value clashes or how the world in which we live
will be dramatically changed in future years, produce effects parallel to those of MS, we
have recently found that these induction produce an increase in the accessibility of deathrelated thoughts. To the extent that existential uncertainty undermines one’s anxietybuffer enough to increase the accessibility of death-related thoughts, it follows from TMT
that such inductions would indeed produce increased worldview defense and/or selfesteem striving.
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In summary, research findings converge in showing that thoughts of death
influence a wide range of superficially unrelated human behaviors. TMT posits that
many more specific human motives, such as needs for self-esteem, faith in our
conceptions of reality, and close personal relationships exist, at least in part, because they
provide protection from a deeply rooted fear of death that is inherent in the human
condition (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997). Although most of us are
sometimes aware of this fear, most of the time it lies beneath the surface of our conscious
awareness. In William James’ (1890, p. xxx) colorful words it is the “worm at the core”
of many of our more conscious needs and desires. But how does an unconscious fear,
that only occasionally impinges on our conscious experience influence such a broad
range of behavior?
The Dual Component Model of Defensive Responses to Conscious and Unconscious
Threat
We have proposed a dual process model of the cognitive and motivational
processes underlying MS effects (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). From this
perspective, distinct defensive processes are activated by conscious and nonconscious
death-related thoughts. Symbolic distal TM defenses, involving self-esteem and faith in
one’s worldview, are activated when thoughts of death are highly accessible but not in
current focal attention. These defenses bear no obvious logical or semantic relation to the
problem of death and provide protection by enabling the individual to perceive him or
herself as a valuable contributor to a meaningful universe. Distal terror management
defenses acquire their anxiety-buffering properties by virtue of early socialization
experiences with one’s parents or primary care-givers, in which the safety and security
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associated with parental attachment comes to be associated with the sense of personal
value that comes from living up to parental standards of value and accepting the version
of reality (i.e., their version of the cultural worldview) that they teach us. We suspect that
much of the controversy surrounding TMT results from the fact that these distal
defensive bear no obvious relation to the problem of death and that they are activated
when thoughts of death are outside of conscious attention. This renders introspection on
these processes extremely difficult if not impossible.
Conscious thoughts of death are defended against in a more rational manner, with
defensive distortions that directly address the problem of death or push such thoughts out
of consciousness. Direct, threat-focused, proximal defenses, that entail denying one’s
vulnerability to death in a rational manner or simply distracting oneself from the issue,
emerge when thoughts of death are in current consciousness or focal attention. These
defenses entail either pushing death into the distant future, by exaggerating one’s health,
hardiness, and likely longevity (e.g., I’m in great health, I don’t smoke, my grandfather
lived to be 112), making promises to do things that are believed to increase one’s
longevity and forestall death (e.g., I’m going to quit smoking tomorrow, start getting
more exercise, and quit my job at the nuclear power plant), or simply suppressing
thoughts of death by distracting oneself from the problem (e.g., turning up the radio as
one passes a fatal accident site; thinking of white bears while waiting for the results of
diagnostic medical tests) or avoiding confrontation with reminders of one’s mortality
(e.g., refusing to attend funerals or get diagnostic medical tests). The defining feature
that these proximal defenses share is that they tackle the problem of death head on.
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These different types of defenses are needed because whereas each is effective in
its intended domain, neither is effective outside of it. Whereas denying one’s
vulnerability to disease, accident, and mayhem is an effective way of pushing thoughts of
death outside of consciousness, such cognitive distortions to nothing to deny the ultimate
inevitability of death, nor are they effective for short-circuiting the potential for anxiety
that high levels of accessibility of death-related thoughts portend. Similarly, whereas
clinging to one’s worldview or sense of personal value provides a sense of security is
effective in reducing the accessibility of death-related thoughts that are outside of
conscious attention, once such thoughts enter consciousness rational thought interferes
with their defensive effectiveness. It becomes apparent that no matter how correct one’s
worldview is or how much of a hero one is within the context of one’s worldview, death
is still an inevitable reality waiting for us all. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, Shakespeare,
and many others, death is a fate we all share, whether great or humble, good or evil, right
or wrong in our beliefs.
Empirical evidence. A detailed review of the empirical evidence supporting this
analysis would be beyond the scope of this chapter; for a more thorough review, see
Pyszczynski et al. (1999). Consistent with this analysis, studies have shown that: (a)
subtle reminders of mortality produce stronger effects than more blatant ones (Greenberg,
Pyszcynski, Porteus, & Solomon, 1994, Study 1); (b) MS effects occur when subjects are
distracted from the problem of death prior to assessment of dependent variables but not
when they are forced to keep death-related themes in focal attention (Greenberg et al.,
1994, Studies 2 & 3); © whereas worldview defense only occurs after distraction from
death-related thoughts, a bias to reduce perceived vulnerability to a short life expectancy
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only occurs immediately after MS (Greenberg, et al., 199x); (d) the accessibility of death
themes does not increase immediately after a MS induction but does increase when
subjects are distracted after MS (Greenberg et al., 1994, Study 4); however putting
subjects under high cognitive load produces an immediate increase in death theme
accessibility in response to MS (Arndt et al., 1997-a); this suggests that subjects actively
suppress death-related thoughts in response to MS (cf., Wegner, 199x), which leads to a
delayed increase in accessibility; (e) whereas our typical supraliminal MS induction does
not produce effects on worldview defense until after a delay and distraction, subliminally
presented death reminders produce immediate effects on worldview defense (Arndt et al.,
1997-b); (f) following MS, and a delayed increase in death theme accessibility,
worldview defense reduces death theme accessibility to baseline (Arndt et al., 1997-a);
(g) worldview defense causes a dissipation of death-related thought rather than a renewed
active suppression (Greenberg et al., 199x); (h) whereas MS leads to increased worldview
defense and a delayed increase in death thought accessibility when subjects are in an
experiential mode (cf., Epstein, 1994) of processing, this does not occur when subjects
are in a rational mode of processing (Simon et al., 199x). Taken together, these results
provide converging support for our contention that whereas proximal defenses that deal
with the problem of death in a head-on and relatively rational manner are activated when
thoughts of death are in current consciousness, distal terror management defenses, that
deal with the problem of death by embedding the individual as a valuable contributor to a
meaningful world, are activated when death-related thoughts are on the fringes of
consciousness.
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The role of affect in terror management processes. An extremely consistent
finding across the TMT literature that has been surprising to some observers is that the
inductions used to remind participants of death that consistently produce worldview
defense in MS studies almost never produce any signs of affect, anxiety, or emotion in
participants. In the few studies where MS has been found to influence affective
responses, the increases occur on reports of positive affect or in a few cases, feelings of
control or hopelessness (REFS), rather than negative affect, anxiety, or distress. Most
studies have also assessed the possibility that affect mediates the effect of MS and no
evidence of mediation by consciously experienced affect or physiological arousal has
been found (cf., Greenberg et al, 1997; Pyszczynski et al, 1999). This has been viewed as
a problem for the theory by some observers, and prompted Muraven and Baumeister
(1997) to sarcastically ask, “where is the terror?”
From early on (Solomon et al., 1991) we have argued that it is not consciously
experienced affect that activates increased clinging to one’s worldview or self-esteem
striving and defense, but rather, the potential for “paralyzing terror” that awareness of
death produces. We use the term terror to explicitly link it to the problem of death, and to
denote the intensity of the affective experience that we believe awareness of death would
produce in the absence of an effectively functioning cultural anxiety-buffer provided by
one’s worldview and self-esteem. Reminders of mortality signal the potential for anxiety,
which people avert by affirming or defending their worldviews, self-esteem, or close
relationships. TMT posits that the worldview, self-esteem, and close personal
attachments enable the person to avoid the experience of existential terror, just as welllearned avoidance responses enable animals to avert the experience of fear or anxiety
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portended by the presence of stimuli associated with aversive stimulation (Solomon &
Wynne, 1954).
This potential for affect that we argue mediates defensive responses to thoughts of
death can be thought of as implicit affect, similar in some ways to the various types of
implicit attitudes investigated by Greenwald, Banaji, and colleagues (e.g., Banaji et al,
19xx; Greenwald & Banaji, 19xx). When thoughts of death are activated, the potential for
affect that is tied up in such thoughts may produce a pre-conscious precursor to the
experience of affect. Exactly what these pre-conscious precursors to affect entail is a
difficult question that will require a more thorough understanding of pre-conscious
processes. However, it is clear, from both common experience and empirical research
(e.g., Greenberg, et al., 1992, 1993) that thoughts of death sometimes produce strong
affective responses. Just think of the last time a car swerved in front of you as you were
driving or a doctor said that a lump, mole, or other symptom “looks suspicious” and that
he or she would like to perform some diagnostic tests. From a TMT perspective, if there
were not potential for affective experience associated with thoughts of death, there would
be no need to activate the various defensive strategies that consistently emerge after
reminders of one’s mortality in the literature.
Although this analysis is highly consistent with the available evidence, until
recently, we have not conducted research to assess the role that a potential for anxiety is
posited to play in these processes. Very recently, we have recently demonstrated that the
potential for affect does indeed play a central mediating role in the defensive responses
that MS activates (Greenberg, Martens, Jonas, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, in press). We
reasoned that if the potential to experience affect mediates defensive responses to MS,
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then no such defensive responses should emerge among individuals who are led to
believe that their potential to experience anxiety has been temporarily blocked. To test
this hypothesis, participants were told they were participating in a study on the effect of
herbal medicines and were induced to drink a glass of tea purported to contain a highly
effective herbal mixture that is known to either block one’s potential to experience fear
and anxiety or enhance one’s memory. Both of these concoctions were in fact placebos.
After consuming the tea, half of the participants were exposed to a typical MS induction
and half to a parallel induction focused on other aversive events, after which their
evaluations of authors and essays that praised or criticized the United States were
assessed. As in many previous studies, the difference between participants’ evaluation of
the pro- and anti-US essays served as our measure of worldview defense. Whereas
participants in the memory-enhancing-placebo condition exhibited a pattern of increased
worldview defense after MS similar to that found in previous research, participants in the
anxiety-blocking-placebo condition were unaffected by MS.
These findings provide additional evidence that it is the potential rather than the
actual experience of affect that activates defensive processes when one contrast them
with what would be expected if actual affective or arousal states were, in fact, involved in
the process. The misattribution of arousal literature suggests that if participants were
experiencing affect or arousal, then giving them a placebo that they believe will block
their potential for such experience would augment the subjective experience of emotion
(e.g., Zanna & Cooper, 1974). This prior research has shown that placebos that are
presented as producing relaxation produce an increase in dissonance reduction or selfserving attributional biases, rather than the decrease in defensive responses observed in
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the present study. The contrast between the present findings and those of these classic
studies reinforces our contention that it is the potential for affect rather than the actual
experience of affect that instigates terror management processes. Research is currently
underway to further explore the nature of this implicit affect that awareness of death
produces and how it mediates the relationship between death thought accessibility and the
activation of terror management defenses.
The Activation of Worldview Defense
Given the multifaceted nature of individuals’ cultural worldviews and the standards they use to attain
self-esteem, an important question emerges: Which of the many possible ways of affirming meaning and
personal value will they resort to in order to defend against the threat that thoughts of death pose. In other
words, how does death thought accessibility lead to the shoring up of particular aspects of the individuals’
terror management system.
We recently conducted some initial studies of the effect of MS on the spontaneous accessibility of
CWV-relevant concepts (Arndt, Greenberg, & Cook, in press). TMT posits that over the course of
development children learn to ward off the fear of death by clinging to the CWV in which they are
imbedded. This suggests that reminders of death might spontaneously increase the accessibility of CWVrelated constructs. In our first study we found that MS led to a delayed increase in the accessibility of
nationalistic constructs, as indicated by an increase in the frequency of word completions like flag and
anthem, but only for male participants. In Study 2, we assessed the accessibility of both nationalistic and
romantic relationship constructs, and found that MS increased the accessibility of nationalistic constructs
for males but relationship constructs for females. A third study replicated this effect with females and
showed that, consistent with previous findings on the time course of the accessibility of death-related
thoughts after MS, this increased cultural worldview accessibility occurs after a delay but not immediately.
A fourth study using males showed that subliminal death primes lead to an immediate increase in
nationalism accessibility. A fifth study using females showed that subliminal death primes lead to an
immediate increase in relationship accessibility, using reaction times on a lexical decision task rather than
word-stem completions as the accessibility measure. A sixth study showed within the same design that
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conscious contemplation of mortality only increased CWWV accessibility after a delay, whereas a
subliminal death prime did so immediately. Finally, a seventh study showed that if America is first primed,
MS increases the accessibility of nationalistic rather than relationships constructs among females.
These studies suggest that death-related ideation is closely associated with CWV-related thought, but
that the type of CWV-related constructs made spontaneously accessible differs systematically by gender.
For males, national identity appears particularly central for TM, whereas for females, romantic
relationships seem more important. Although this is consistent with research on sex differences, on the
surface it seems inconsistent with the general absence of sex differences in previous MS studies. However,
prior MS research always presented participants with stimuli and questions that made particular aspects of
their CWV salient (e.g., the pro-U.S. bias studies confront participants with pro and anti-U.S. essays). In
contrast, these new studies assess spontaneous accessibility without making particular aspects of the CWV
salient—except for Study 7, which showed that reminding women of America did lead to an MS-induced
increase in nationalism accessibility. Understanding the relationship between death-related thoughts and the
differential accessibility of thoughts related to different aspects of the individual’s system of defense helps
explain which of the many possible directions for defense particular individuals will take.
Conclusion
The problem of knowledge of the inevitability of death is a daunting one that we
all must face. TMT suggests that this very human problem lies at the core of some very
basic human motives. Research testing hypotheses derived from the theory has
documented the very wide range of human behavior that are affected by this awareness.
This research has also led to more detailed theoretical analyses of the underlying
psychological processes through which the problem of death exerts its effect that we hope
will ultimately inform other areas of inquiry concerning the interplay of conscious and
unconscious processes and the role they play in human thought, emotion, and behavior.
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