A. Optimal Distinctiveness Theory
B. Mortality Salience Hypothesis
C. The Fear of Death
D. Why we are Afraid to Die
E. Terror Management Theory
F. Consensual Validation
G. Social Implications
H. Affective Influences on Romantic Relationships
Optimal Distinctiveness Theory
Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness theory (1991) suggests that people seek affiliations with groups that enable them to maintain an ideal balance between the desires to fit in and stand out. These motives operate in dialectical opposition to each other, such that meeting one signals a deficit in the other and instigates increased efforts to reduce this deficit. Thus, whereas feelings of belonging instigate attempts to individuate oneself, feelings of uniqueness instigate attempts to re-embed oneself in the collective.
Relating optimal distinctiveness theory to romantic relationships helps explain why sometimes individuals feel an increased love and desire for inclusion of their partner and other times feel a need to distance oneself romantically. When people feel smothered by their partner, they need space; when confronted with too much space, they need intimacy. We have all been there—on one side or the other—standing witness to this crazy phenomenon of opposing motives.
Following Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness theory, the motive to stand out should be activated when people are led to believe that the personality overlap between them and their romantic partner is so great that they are in danger of losing their sense of self. Likewise, the motive to belong should be triggered when people are led to believe that the personality overlap between them and their romantic partner is so small that confidence in the stability of the relationship is threatened. If recent terror management studies are correct in their predictions, mortality salience should magnify this pattern.
Mortality Salience Hypothesis
The mortality salience hypothesis states that if a psychological structure provides protection against anxiety, then reminding people of the source of this anxiety should increase the need for that structure (Pysczcynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997). Show a spider phobic a black widow and suddenly, their desire for a can of Raid, or better yet, someone to kill it for them, dramatically increases. When our fears become a reality, we look frantically for someone or something to protect us.
Why
are we Afraid to Die?
One of the unavoidable consequences of being human is to share the same intense desire for continued existence with all living things, yet have the capacity to recognize the ultimate futility of this most basic biological imperative (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, in press). We want to live, yet we know we’re going to die, despite our best efforts.
"An animal whose behavior is governed by purely instinctual patterns of response needs only to act. But once an animal becomes self-conscious, straightforward action is no longer possible" (Becker, 1971). Although humans share with all other living things the basic negative feedback loop as the mechanism for adjusting behavior to achieve their goals, the flexibility of this process is increased exponentially by the sophisticated cognitive abilities that have evolved over eons, and the potential for awareness and abstraction to which these abilities give rise. We transcend the purely physical realm in which all other species reside and enter a different plane of subjective existence (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1998). Self-consciousness engenders a vast potential for both awe and terror: awe, because knowing one is alive makes us aware of possibilities and the grandness of the universe; terror, because knowing one is alive necessitates the horrifying recognition of an inevitable death that can neither be anticipated nor controlled (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997).
Interestingly, asking people to contemplate their own mortality reliably results in defensive responses even though people do not report being anxious or upset by thoughts of their own death. Becker (1973), in his book The Denial of Death, asserts that the fear of death is natural and present in everyone no matter how disguised it may be. The fear of death is an emotional manifestation of the self-preservation instinct. Most people probably rarely think about death or their ultimate individual value. Rather, they think about their goals and aspirations relevant to their careers, relationships, hobbies, and the means through which these goals are achieved. The fear of death must be behind all normal functioning in order for people to aim towards self-preservation, but not constantly present in one’s mental functioning, else the person could not function. Continued questioning of one’s value as a person may ultimately lead one to a direct consideration of death and the experience of existential terror. The fear must be repressed enough to allow us to live comfortably and normally, yet accessible enough to allow us to react appropriately to any threat to our continued existence. Fear keeps us safe; it is adaptive in the sense that it signals the need for behavior to reduce any threats (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, & Hamilton, 1990). This may be why those persons who have near death experiences tend to rethink their priorities in life—death is a reality check.
Terror management theory (TMT) posits that people deal with the problem of death by employing two distinct modes of defense: direct, rational, threat-focused defenses, that function to reduce the individual’s perception of his or her vulnerability to life threatening conditions, and thus push the problem of death into the vague and distant future; and symbolic, cultural defenses, that embed the individual as a valuable part of an eternal conception of reality that is bigger, stronger, and more enduring than any individual (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1998). These defense mechanisms are manifested in the form of a dual-component cultural anxiety-buffer consisting of: a) a cultural worldview and b) self-esteem, which is acquired by believing that one is living up to the standards of value inherent in one’s cultural worldview.
Cultural worldviews facilitate effective terror management by providing individuals in a group with a vision of reality that supplies answers to universal cosmological questions—"Who am I"; "Where did I come from?"; "What should I do?"; "What will happen to me when I die?"—in ways that imbue the universe with meaning, permanence, and stability, and convey hope of symbolic and/or literal immortality. Every culture, by upholding standards by which its people are suppose to abide, affords opportunities for individuals to live forever—either symbolically, by the production of great works or amassing of great fortunes that extend beyond an individual’s life time and therefore serve as a physical testament to one’s existence, and/or literally, through religious beliefs of an afterlife through reincarnation or heaven (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, in press).
Self-esteem is the primary psychological mechanism by which culture serves its death-defying function. Self-esteem can serve its anxiety-buffering function only to the extent that faith in the cultural worldview is sustained. Because faith in the cultural worldview depends on consensual validation from others, those who question that worldview or advocate a different one threaten an individual’s faith in their worldview. Faith in the cultural worldview is maintained through secular and religious teachings, associated cultural rituals, continual social validation in interpersonal and intergroup contexts, and defensive reactions to those with alternative worldviews (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997).
Self-esteem acquires its anxiety-buffering qualities in the context of the socialization process. Eligibility for immortality is limited to those who "do the right thing." This entails adhering to the standards of appropriate conduct associated with the social roles that exist in a given culture. Ultimately, self-esteem is culturally constructed in that there is no way to feel good about oneself in the absence of socially prescribed standards of right and wrong. Obviously, what is considered right and wrong varies from culture to culture; no one cultural worldview is literally true. Consequently, individuals must rely on faith in order to preserve their belief in the particular culturally prescribed vision of reality that they subscribe to (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, in press).
The two components of the cultural anxiety-buffer are viewed as somewhat arbitrary, and therefore fragile, social constructions that require continual consensual validation in order to function effectively (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, 1999). The mortality salience hypothesis suggests that people have especially positive reactions to anyone or anything that supports what they believe in (cultural worldview), and especially negative reactions to anyone or anything that threatens it (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, 1997). In order to reduce the anxiety associated with conscious thoughts of our own death, we seek out people and things that will validate our cultural worldviews and thereby increase our self-esteem. The basic finding that mortality salience leads to worldview defense has been consistently replicated, and this has been obtained using different manipulations of mortality salience and measuring different aspects of cultural worldviews (for a review, see Florian & Mikulincer, 1997; Nelson, Moore, Olivetti, & Scott, 1997). To the extent that self-esteem provides protection from deeply rooted anxieties about one’s vulnerability and mortality, increasing self-esteem should reduce the tendency to employ defensive maneuvers to deny one’s vulnerability and mortality (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Pinel, Simon, & Jordan, 1993). Basically, once anxiety over death has been reduced by making ourselves feel good about who we are and what we stand for, the urgent need to seek further consensual validation tends to decrease.
Research conducted to test hypotheses derived from terror management theory has demonstrated that concerns about human mortality affect a broad range of socially significant behaviors that are not directly related to the problem of death. Thinking about one’s own mortality can influence interpersonal evaluations, judgments of moral transgressors, stereotyping, in-group bias, aggression, social consensus estimates, and conformity to personal and cultural standards (for a review, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). These studies support the basic TMT proposition that people are motivated to maintain positive self-images and faith in their cultural worldviews because of the protection from deeply rooted anxiety that these psychological entities provide (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, 1999).
From the perspective of terror management theory, we suggest that existential mortality concerns are at the root of individuation/inclusion motives and therefore shed light on the dynamics of romantic love. To the extent that a trait is viewed as desirable within the context of a cultural worldview, engaging in behavior that exemplifies this trait would be expected to enhance one’s self-esteem (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). If this is the case (providing the need to belong and the need to stand out are truly parts of our cultural worldview) then reminding people of their mortality should increase their inclination to seek either inclusion or individuation, depending on which need is most salient at the time (Simon, Greenberg, Arndt, Pyszczynski, Clement, & Solomon, 1997).
Affective Influences on Romantic Relationships
In 1994, Forgas, Levinger, and Moylan investigated the role of short-term affective states on the way people perceive various aspects of their personal relationships. They found evidence implying that one’s evaluative judgment about their relationship or romantic partner is more likely to be favorable in a positive mood state, and more likely to be unfavorable in a negative mood state. Their research suggests that short term mood states (induced by having participants view happy or sad films) can have a significant impact on how people evaluate their relationships and perceive their partners.
In the present study, we hope to manipulate mood by assigning participants to feedback conditions that indicate their degree of personality overlap with their partner. The feedback is meant to put participants in a self-focused state that will result in either positive or negative affect. Because both of the feedback conditions are extreme (10 % or 90% personality overlap), we are hypothesizing that negative affect will be induced. It is not desirable so different from your partner that you have nothing in common with them, nor is it desirable to be so similar to them that you lose your sense of self.
Focusing attention on the self instigates a self-evaluative process in which one’s current state, on whatever dimension is currently most salient, is compared with whatever standard for that dimension is salient. Falling short of the standard produces negative affect, which leads to attempts to either escape the self-focused state or reduce the discrepancy between the current state and the standard. Awareness of discrepancies between self and standard allow a leakage of existential terror. This leakage of terror, experienced as anxiety, embarrassment, shame, or guilt, then motivates behavior aimed at reducing the discrepancy (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, & Hamilton, 1990). Because society places value on both individuation and inclusion, our hypotheses propose a theory of optimal inclusiveness.
