Anxiety and Thoughts of Death

20 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Persuasion, Psychology, Uncategorized

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anxiety, Fear, Persuasion, Terror Management Theory, thoughts of death

Short version: It’s not just the idea, but the anxiety produced by the idea, which gives rise to an increase in thoughts of death. If I tell you your worldview is stupid and you don’t care, you don’t have increased thoughts of death. But if you take my “you’re stupid and so’s your worldview” to heart and feel anxious, you’ll have increased thoughts of death. If you have increased thoughts of death, you try to defend your worldview from attack.
Longer version: Terror Management Theory proposes that when we are confronted with thoughts of death, we seek to (1) shore up our self-esteem, and (2) our worldview. For example, an atheist confronted with death can say, I won’t know I’m dead so there is no reason to fear death. A Muslim can say, I will be resurrected to Paradise, so I have no need to fear death. When I thinks about death, they can think about their response to death.

When confronted with some information which undercuts their worldview, (say, there is a god, or Muhammed was not a true prophet), research shows that the victim (or test-subject, depending upon your point-of-view) has more thoughts about death (DTA death-thought accessibility).

Since thoughts of death produce anxiety, human beings seek for ways to relieve that anxiety (anxiety being unpleasant). Researchers have noted two basic mechanisms, first were used to relieve the anxiety. The immediate response is to distract oneself or otherwise try to ignore the information). Then, after a passage of time and as thought the immediate thoughts of death fade, one begins to various “distal defenses” are brought to bear. The victim seeks to shore-up their symbolic mechanism to deal with death.

The research has primarily dealt with the thoughts of death, not the emotion of anxiety. A study published 2014 sought to examine the emotive functions.

The study sought to produce anxiety in Protestant Christian undergraduate students. They were told that the they were testing how a drink effected memory. Some of the students were told the drink contained caffeine and would them “jittery,” others were told it was a vitamin drink.

The reason for the two different drinks has to do with “attribution of arousal manipulation.” The students who drank the “caffeine” might attribute their anxiety to the drink and not to the article challenging their beliefs.

The students were given an article which challenged their religious beliefs (Jesus is the same as Krishna or Mithra or Horus). A control group read an article on the northern lights.

The next phase asked the students to complete words . So they were given coff–. Do they write “coffee” or “coffin”? The reason for this section to was both assess their thoughts of death and to give time for the “distal defenses” to engage.

The final phase as the students to evaluate their article – did it make you angry? How smart was the author?

When the students were given the “caffeine”, there was a marginal tendency to attribute their anxiety to caffeine and to have fewer “death-related” thoughts than the vitamin drink group. The students with the vitamin drink did experience more death related thoughts when having their religious beliefs attacked.

Not surprisingly, the students who read the attacking article had greater emotional response than those who read the article on the northern lights.

But since the researchers had given an introductory questionnaire on death related thoughts, they wanted to make sure that initial questionnaire did not poison their results.

They performed a very similar test. But this time they gave the students an opportunity to set bail for a prostitute. The thinking was that death-related thoughts would lead to more protection for their worldview, which would lead to higher bail amounts.

The surmise was true.

Here is what the researchers believed was significant in these tests: When the student attributed their anxiety to the caffeine they did not seek to protect their world view. It seems that when they blamed the drink for their anxiety it acted to protect them from thinking further about death.

A third test was premised upon this idea: Humans protect ourselves from thoughts of death by distinguishing ourselves from other animals. Therefore, we experience disgust when someone eats strange food, defects on the living room floor or commits incest, because it reminds us that we are animals; reminding ourselves that we are animals, reminds that we can die like animals. Therefore, we feel disgust in those circumstances.

You don’t need to take that explanation for why we experience disgust when someone decides to imitate a dog in your apartment.

The third experiment sought to determine the extent to which misattribution could apply to disgust.

And so we come to a test which I am glad I did not have to experience. The students were going to be subjected to viewing a number of gross pictures, someone vomiting, urine, feces, snot, a dirty toilet, a bloody finger. These apparently makes us think we are animals.

All the students were given an essay to read. One essay said, you’re just animal. The other essay had nothing to do with animals.

All the students were given instructions on viewing the pictures. Some were told to view the pictures carefully. Others were given specific instructions to take a “detached and unemotional attitude.” They were to be clinical and unfeeling as they examined the pictures.

After looking at the pictures, they were examined for disgust.

The students were instructed to have clinical detachment when viewing the pictures had fewer death-related thoughts after viewing them.

And so again, an increase a serious negative emotion increased one’s thought of death.

Here was the upshot:

Our findings suggest that threatening material will only increase DTA when that material is experienced as emotionally unsettling.

Webber, D., Schimel, J., Faucher, E.H. et al. “Emotion as a necessary component of threat-induced death thought accessibility and defensive compensation.” Motiv Emot 39, 142–155 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9426-1.

What precisely takes place is unclear.

This research reminds me of some research I did in college on the grotesque in literature. There is a theory that we are attracted to disturbing things in art because it allows us to focus our existing anxiety on a point and attribute our anxiety on that artwork (rather than on some other matter which may be disturbing me.

There is an important consideration here for persuasion study. Persuasion functions by creating some sort of dis-ease, some anxiety and a proffered means of resolution. You see the car, you want the car: anxiety. You can buy the car: resolution.

If the creation of anxiety generally has a tendency to increase thoughts of death – and thus thoughts of protection of my worldview – this creates a certain complication. The research showed only a “marginal” decrease in death related thoughts when the anxiety could be attributed to the caffeine drink.

If we seek to create a powerful persuasive movement, we have the potential for creating greater anxiety and thus increased death related thoughts. An increase in death related thoughts comes along with protection of one’s worldview.

Thus, a powerful persuasive move have the wind at its back if the persuasion accords with one’s worldview. But, an attempt to make a strong persuasive move (by generating a great deal of anxiety at first) will have a headwind if that persuasive move is contrary to the worldview.

This does not mean that the issue under persuasive pressure is distinctly a facet of the worldview; only that it can be concordant or discordant with a worldview.

The Squirrel! Theory of Anxiety Management

20 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Romans, Uncategorized

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anxiety, Consensus, Persuasion, Psychology, Squirrel, Terror Management Theory, Threat

Distraction as a Means of Relief

A 2005 series of studies published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that perhaps people deal with threats by thinking about something else. This is essentially the Squirrel! Theory of stress management. That is perhaps too glib a summary and certainly not academic, I think it is fair.

The article, itself, is remarkably dense and considers a number of seemingly disparate concepts. The idea initially under consideration is the fact that people – particularly under some threat – exaggerate the extent to which others hold their personal views on any number of subjects.

They first note three major theories for this observed condition: (1) It might generate social support; you get others to like you. (2) Cognitive closure: there’s nothing to think about here, everyone has the same opinion. (3) Since threats undermine confidence in myself, exaggerating social consensus makes me feel better about myself.

They then went about threatening college students to see whether the third theory proved itself. They focused upon “defensively proud individuals”. While there are variants in the way in which this is expressed, “The common theme is that they all involve an explicit focus on an ostensible self-strength, which appears to mask vulnerability. Thus we see the three forms as manifestation of a latent defensive pride construct and, in the present research, expect them to be related to arrogant self-righteousness in the face of threats.” Ian McGregor et al., “Defensive Pride and Consensus: Strength in Imaginary Numbers,” Journal of Psychology and Social Psychology 89, no. 6 (2005): 978-96.
In the first study they gave two groups of psychology students a section to read on statistics. One paper was impenetrable; the other a simple explain of the importance of statistics. They were both told that the paper was something everyone knew (a “popular tool”). For those with the difficult page, the effect would be “you’re stupid.” They then asked them questions on moral issues such as abortion and capital punishment. Those who were humiliated by the researchers over estimated the number of people who held their particular views on the various issues.
A second study asked two groups of students to either vividly describe themselves in a frightening circumstance or a comfortable and securable place. They were then asked the moral questions. The frightened students again over-estimated the number of people who held their personal views on moral issues.
A third study threatened all of the students; but following the threat some students received praise. The students were then given two articles supposed written by a student who visited the United States from a foreign country. One version praised the US; one version complained and condemned. Being praised after being threatened resulted in less negative evaluation of the condemning “foreigner.”
A fourth study was conducted to determine whether the exaggeration of consensus was from “reflected glory” of the group or mere consensus with a group.
In the end, the researchers were left with the observation that under stress people can alleviate that stress by being affirmed personally or by imagining the whole world is on their side.
They then compared their findings to a number of other studies, and in particular to the results of terror management theory. But whereas terror management theory suggests that the defensive nature of such consensus under threat was ultimately as a means of protecting one against the fear of death, the various findings of terror management – and other studies – is we can only think about one thing at a time.

We propose that all of these findings can be economically explained from a thought-control perspective According to Wegner (1992), thought suppression begins with the search for distracting thoughts. The “distractor search brings a series of thoughts to mind until one is selected that absorbs attention,” at which point, “attention is drawn from the controlled distractor search to the absorbing distractor itself.” (991)

Since thoughts about oneself are easily available, they can act as useful “distractors” when faced with fearful conditions. The researchers suggest various neurological bases for this conclusion. But in the end, it means that one way to deal with anxiety is to distract yourself.
From a persuasion perspective, it might seem that fear will be an effective means of persuasion with coupled with consensus: First you introduce a disturbing matter then you offer up your product or service wrapped up in a consensus: Everyone loves X!
But the research is a bit more-tricky: If the affirmative is on a ground too closely related to the threat, it “fails to quell the threat because they [the affirmations] remind the participants of the threat.”
In their research, the authors of these studies argued that affirmations and consensus functioned the same way by distracting the one under anxiety. Thus, what applies to consensus would apply to affirmations.
But there is another possibility here: A product or service which resolves the threat (rather than merely distract from thinking about the threat) might be sufficient even if the threat and the consensus-approved product concern exactly the same thing.
In conflict, distraction is well known as a means of deflating a threat.
A final element of the article struck a theological note which the authors may not have considered:

PWe propose that threatened people may have turned to consensus in the present research for the same reason [diminish ruminations about threats]. Imagining widespread agreement with one’s own convictions may be self-soothing because self-righteousness is an appealing fantasy that can capture attention, make threats seem more remote, and allow them to fade from salience. (987)

Although the quoted language contains the clause “capture the attention”, the argument is not in distraction but in diffusion. The threat against me is not real, but I am righteous. But how could my righteousness have anything to do with the reality of a threat? The connection here is not apparent in the article.

In Romans 1, Paul makes a sustained argument from verse 18-31. It begins with the proposition that human beings know ourselves to be under judgment, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness.” In turn, human beings act to suppress subjective knowledge of that threat. The act of suppression then leads to a number of perversions and distortions of the human being in a whole catalogue of insanity and sin. The argument concludes with the observation that human beings not only do these unrighteous things, “they give hearty approval” to those who practice the same things.

Under the most profound existential threat, human beings respond with a forced consensus. However, the argument made in the quotation above, and by Paul, is not that the consensus acts to distract us; rather it acts to deny the fact of the threat. The more people who believe a thing, the more “objective” it in fact is. If all of us deny or believe some X then it is true. The threat is thus believed into non-existence.

Schopenhauer on Happiness.7 Unembellished Existence

04 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Happiness, Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized

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anxiety, Arthur Schopenhauer, Death, Happiness, Schopenhauer, Terror Management Theory

This is an interesting bit of argumentation and slight of hand:

It is only after a man has got rid of all pretension, and taken refuge in mere unembellished existence, that he is able to attain that peace of mind which is the foundation of human happiness. Peace of mind! that is something

Consider the argument:

If I rid myself of X & take Y, then I’ll get Z

Z is the foundation of human happiness.

Z is wonderful.

The force of the argument is the weight it puts on Z, “peace of mind”. Peace of mind is truly a good thing. The slight of hand takes place in the logical movement from the conditions to the conclusion: Is there really any logical connection?

First, “It is only after a man has got rid of all pretension”. What is the pretension according to Schopenhauer: that the world is meaningful; that there is any providence in this world. You can only have peace of mind if you realize that your life is meaningless.

The argument is attractive because it makes one sound rational and brave. But we need to stop at that the matter of rationality. What does rationality even mean if the universe is meaningless? Reason can’t have any “real” ground: it is simply an assertion. If the universe is irrational, how then I can assert rationality? Rationality is simply an assertion, a trick of language. How do we say a thing is “true”, if there is no meaning.

Here is the point: Schopenhauer needs rationality and reason and meaning to even begin to assert that the universe is meaningless. I recall reading in Buddhist literature years ago about the need to speak and not speak: the sound of one hand clapping. The assertions of meaningless and ultimate insubstantiality of existence mean that one must speak and then not speak of such things. While there is a remarkable difficulty in the Buddhist position, it is at least honest.

Schopenhauer’s position, I would assert, is incoherent.

What then is the psychological connection between the insistent conclusion that the world is irrational and meaningless, and that I am incoherent, with peace of mind. Wouldn’t such an assertion be anxiety producing?

Moreover, if one considers terror management theory, the assertion that fear of death requires one to raise some sort of psychological defense in order to ward off the anxiety of approaching death; then one would assert that some sort of unvarnished I’m going to die and life is meaningless position would not produce peace.

We can see that Schopenhauer then quickly moves to a position of reason and order:

Limitations always make for happiness. We are happy in proportion as our range of vision, our sphere of work, our points of contact with the world, are restricted and circumscribed.

And:

Simplicity, therefore, as far as it can be attained, and even monotony, in our manner of life, if it does not mean that we are bored, will contribute to happiness; just because, under such circumstances, life, and consequently the burden which is the essential concomitant of life, will be least felt.

What these positions reduce to, psychologically, is that avoiding circumstances which have the potential of producing anxiety helps one to feel better. Ignoring problems which cannot be resolved is an obvious means of reducing anxiety – but what this has to do with the underlying assertion that life is meaningless is difficult to understand.