More interesting for our purposes is what we call mortality salience and worldview defense. The most interesting idea or let's say, to put it another way, the most difficult idea to actually test is Becker's claim that your beliefs about reality serve a death denying function. So most people, thirty years ago, when I would wander around earth I would say, well, part of what culture does is to reduce anxiety about the fact that we will someday die, people said all right, but I don't know how you can test that, and if you can't test it it's not science. Our idea was very, very simple and it happens like a lot of ideas do, kind of by accident while we were hanging out one day on our intramural bowling team. And it was disarmingly simple, we just said okay, if he's right, if your ideas about reality, if your cultural constructs help reduce death anxiety, then let's have some people think about themselves dying. And let's have other people think about something either neutral or really unpleasant but not fatal. And then let's see what happens when we ask them a few minutes later to evaluate other people who either share their beliefs about reality, or who are opposed to them or merely different. Let me say that another way just to be sure that we understand each other. What we thought is that, if you ask people to think about themselves dying, that should make them need their cultural beliefs even more. And we should be able to detect that because when you've been reminded of your mortality, you should like other people who support your beliefs even more than you normally do, and you should really hate people who oppose your beliefs or who are just different. Head shakes if that makes a little bit of sense. So, here's how we do it, then I'm just going to barf up a couple of experiments before we wrap things up to give you a sense of what we know. So, usually what happens is we bring people into the psychology laboratory and we tell them that we're interested in the relationship between personality attributes and interpersonal judgments. And then we have them fill out a whole bunch of personality questionnaires, and those are what are called filler items, because we're generally not interested in what people say about them. We're just using them in order to obscure what we're really interested in. And that's two little questions where we ask them, please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your death arouse in you, and jot down as specifically as you can, what you think will happen as you physically die. Does it make sense that that would momentarily remind you of your mortality? All right, in control conditions we ask people stuff, like think about the thoughts and feelings of watching television or eating dinner. In other conditions we say hey, you've been paralyzed in a car crash, you're experiencing intense pain, you have a root canal and you've run out of anesthetic. You're giving a talk and you puke on the desk, and you're humiliated and embarrassed, all negative things, but you're still alive. And then a couple of minutes later, often in a different room, with a different experimenter, we have people just pass judgement on what we call target individuals who are either similar or different. All right, so for example, we did one of our earliest experiments was at the University of Arizona when I was there teaching with my buddy, Jeff, in 1988. And we had Christian participants, and we either had them think about themselves dying, or we had them think about something unpleasant but not fatal. Then we had other people in the room, and they were all college students, and they were all actually very similar, except some of the students, when they talked about themselves, they said that they had come from Christian families, and other students said that they had come Jewish families. And then we just had our participants rate how much they liked and respected the other people in the room. I hope it's very obvious that what we were interested in was our Christian participants' ratings of the other people in the room as a function of their religion, depending upon whether or not they had been reminded of death. Does that make sense? I know I'm going fast, but what we found was striking. In the controlled condition, the Christian participants did not discriminate between Christians and Jews. They like them each just as much, except when they were asked to think about their mortality. Then they like their fellow Christians a lot more, and now they like Jewish people a lot less. All right now, anybody who grew up in a Christian household, Christians, Christians, Christians? This has nothing to do with Christians per say, we just had Christians in that study because all five of the Jewish people in Arizona were busy that day. So in Israel when you ask Jewish people to think about death, they like Jewish people a lot more and they like Arabs a lot less. In Iran, one of our colleagues, when Iranians are asked to think about death, they like Iranians a lot more and they like Westerners a lot less. Not only do reminders of death radically alter your attitudes about other people, it also tremendously determines your behavior. So, a German colleague did a study where he reminded Germans either about death or something unpleasant and then he just had them in a room with a bunch of chairs. So, imagine that there's nine chairs here and imagine, in one of the chairs in the middle, is somebody sitting in the chair who either looks very much like a German or who looks like somebody from Turkey. And all they wanted to do, they just said, hey, have a seat and we'll be back in a couple of minutes. They just wanted to see where the German sat, depending on if the other person in the room was German or Turkish, as a result of when they were reminded of their mortality. And once again what happened was very striking. In the control condition, there was no difference in physical distance depend upon whether the person in the middle chair was German or Turkish, right? Can you imagine if you were in a room that you'd tend to leave one space, so if we had somebody there you might leave one seat and then sit down next to them. Does that make sense, leave an empty seat? Right, but that's not what happened when they were reminded of death. Now if it was a Turkish person in the middle seat, the Germans tended to sit as far away as possible. If it was a fellow German they tended to sit on their lap, or not really but right next to them. Our point is that, not only do your attitudes change when you're reminded of your mortality, but so too does your behavior. We did some other studies, I'm just going to bounce through them very, very quickly, where we showed that when you are reminded of your mortality If you're given an opportunity to actually physically harm somebody, you will do so, if they are different than yourself. And then I've already told you, we've been working with some Iranian psychologists. And we did some work, where we showed that Iranians reminded of death became much more supportive of suicide bombers, and much more willing to sign up to become one. Who's heard of Iranian suicide bombers? There's actually a school in Tehran, where you can sign up to become a bomber. Now that sounds very gruesome, but we did studies in America at the same time. Americans are very pragmatic, they're not going to blow themselves up, but they're very happy to blow up other people. So what we did, was we had American either think about.. We did that here. Oh, crap. We did that here. Rutger's Florette did this, and I think Dan may have been involved, I can't even remember. But we had Americans think about dying, or not. And we asked them how much do you support the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons against countries, like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq I guess at the time, who do not pose a direct threat to us. And again, what we found was I think profoundly stark, and discomforting. And that is that in the control condition, Americans across the political spectrum, conservatives, moderates, and liberals. They were totally opposed to the preemptive use of weapons of mass destruction against countries, who do not yet directly threaten us. But when they were reminded of death, they were now very enthusiastic about nuking, and chemicaling, and biological warfare, against countries that are not yet a direct threat. And this was particularly true for those participants, who reported having a conservative political attitudes. And then we did some studies in couple of presidential elections ago. You guys are too young maybe, but who remembers the 2004 presidential election when President George W Bush was running against Senator John Kerry? We did this for Dan, and I at Rutgers, five weeks before the presidential election, we did the same thing. We had people either think about dying, or just think about something unpleasant, and then we just asked them, who do you expect to be voting for in the upcoming election? And what we found was quite astonishing, and we replicated this effect several times. But at Rutgers, what we found is that people told us that they expected to vote for Senator Kerry by a 4 to 1 margin over President Bush in our controlled condition. But when they were reminded of their mortality, those participants said that they expected to vote for President Bush over Senator Kerry, by a 3 to 1 margin. I don't know about you, but that kind of freaks me out, that a very subtle alteration, and psychological conditions might have a radical effect on your political preferences. Who intends to vote in the upcoming election? Good, because it's not only one of our biggest rights as citizens, it's a tremendous responsibility. And I would just urge you, regardless of who you vote for, to be aware of thinly veiled efforts to manipulate your political preferences, by allusions to matters pertaining to mortality. Two more quick things, and that is that we have done studies not only in the laboratory, but also outside in the so called real world. We have gone to places, and we sometimes stop people infront of a funeral home, or we stop people infront of a grocery store. And does it make sense, if somebody stops you infront of a funeral home that, that might remind you of your death? Well, when we do that we get the same effects. When we interview somebody infront of a funeral parlor, they hate people that are different, and they love people that are similar. Even more importantly perhaps, we have done experiments, and these are back in the lab. Where we bring people into the lab, and we flash the word death really fast, 28 milliseconds. Who realizes how fast that is? That's so fast that you wouldn't see anything, and yet when we flashed the word death, so fast that you don't see shit, you still love people that are similar, and you hate people that are different. And there's an important point here, and that's that you don't need to know that you're thinking about death for it to be on your mind. And then having consequential effects on the way that you perceive the world, and other people around you. Well, that all sounds like bad news, it sounds like when you are reminded of the fact that you someday die that, that really doesn't bring out the best of us. And so I don't want to leave you with that, because let's turn things around, and on this little handout, look at what I'm calling mitigating factors. And let's just look at some things that we know kind of take the psychological edge off death. One thing that we know, is that there are certain world views that value tolerance. Who's aware of the fact this would be on the, what is it on your thing. We have a page number, I don't know? >> Yeah, it's three. >> Oh, page three, thank you. So, we know there's certain cultures that just value tolerance. Who's aware of that fact, that there are some cultures where it's like hey, we believe that everyone has a right to their beliefs. And it turns out that, when you ask people who harbor that belief to think about their mortality. They do not behave in the same aggressive, and defensive way than folks who believe that we're the best, and fuck the rest. It turns out also, that when you have high self-esteem, I've already argued that self-esteem is important for minimizing death anxiety. And here we don't have time to really go into it, but we need to make a distinction between self-esteem, and narcissism. Who's ever heard the term narcissism? Narcissistic people think they have self-esteem, but they really don't. And this is just a rhetorical question, do you know anybody who when you first meet them, they appear to exude self-confidence, and composure. But when you get to know them a little bit more, you realize that they're really actually very insecure, and it doesn't take much to unsettle them. If we had more time, I would go to great lengths to make a distinction between genuine self-esteem, and narcissism. Because we have plenty of narcissists in America, but very few people with actual self-esteem. But people with genuine self-regard when they are reminded of their mortality, they also do not behave in a defensive fashion. Another thing that I think is just great is what I call common humanity, or we are family. We sometimes bring folks into the lab, and we ask them to think about themselves dying. But then, we remind them that human beings all over the world have much more in common, than we are different. Head shakes if you're aware of that fact. Are you aware of the fact that every human being on Earth is really closely related, genetically? We are a very homogeneous species. We all came from a single neighborhood in the southeastern part of Africa. In a population that some people claim was as small as 200 and no bigger than 2,000. Has anybody ever heard the term a genetic bottleneck? Did we talk about that in the class? Okay, well it turns out that we're really just one big family and when we remind people of that fact, that also seems to take the edge off of death. Then we did some amazing studies, I don't know if Dr. Oglesby has told you about his book, Fantasies of Flight. Have you talked about that Dan? Well, this guy is an accomplished author as well as a funny human and a great professor. Florette and I actually got interested in her coming here when we read Dan's book, Fantasies of Flight, and who's ever seen, not seen, but who when you're growing up ever had cartoon characters that can fly? Who's ever heard about angels or genies? Anthropologists tell us that in every time and place, there are magical entities that can fly and one of the things that we thought is that maybe being able to fly is psychologically speaking, one way to kind of feel invulnerable or immortal. So, we did these studies that are quite interesting, I think, that I'd be happy to send you if you want to see them, where we just had people either imagine themselves flying. This is kind of crazy. Who could, if I asked you to, close your eyes and just imagine yourself flying? Can anybody imagine doing that? And then we had other people, we just said, hey, imagine that you're sitting in a chair. And then we had them think about dying or not. And then we measured whether or not they were defensive thereafter. And sure enough, people that imagined themselves kind of flying around did not react defensively thereafter. I would argue that those studies are a very potentially significant finding with regard to the notion that part of our intense desire to believe in a soul has something to do with a disinclination to die. Finally, I want to leave you with one of my favorite guys, who's ever heard of Albert Camus, the guy that wrote The Stranger? And what else did he write, The Plague. These are like, uplifting books, murder, plague. But in his notebooks, Camus said, there is only one liberty to come to terms with death after which everything is possible. And if there's one just kind of like take home message that I would leave you with, it's that, I think it's not a bad idea. We know that we will all die someday. But back to this Otto Rank dude that I've been referring to a few times, Otto Rank had a very obscure phrase, he called it the voluntary affirmation of the obligatory. Well, what does that mean? What it means is that you're going to die whether you like it or not. Head shakes if you can admit that. That's obligatory. But, what's totally voluntary is the way that you choose to respond to that fact. And I would argue that one of the most important decisions that you could make, over the course of the next 30, 40, 50, hopefully 60 or 70 years, is how you will personally come to terms with your own finitude? And I think this is important for a number of reasons, but here's one that I'll just leave you with. Has anybody ever heard of a psychologist Erik Erikson? Anybody ever hear of Erikson? He's one of my favorite psychologists, and in the book, Eight Stages of Man, and if he was here today I'm sure he would write about the eight stages of human. In the very last line of that book, Erikson says something along the lines that if parents have the courage to die, their children will have the faith to live. And, I think that's a great way for me to stop if you'll give me 30 more seconds and just point out that there's a lot at stake here. The way that you choose to live your life, I would argue, has a lot to do with the attitude that you adopt to the fact that you will someday not be here. And that in turn will affect not only the way that you treat yourself, it will affect that way that you treat your fellow humans and it will affect the way that your children grow up and the condition that the world will be in when we're no longer part of it. Anyway, I thank you very much for being able to invade your classroom, I can't believe you actually sat still and listen. Do write to me if you've got ideas, questions, criticisms, don't be bashful, have a great day. I think we finished on time, is that right? Okay. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you.
