There’s a relatively new branch of psychology called Terror Management Theory that specializes the general phenomena cited above for instances where one is reminded of one’s mortality. I’ve only read a couple journal articles in the field, and I’m not a psychologist, but one experimental design in particular struck a cord in me.
I’m no longer certain of the study, but they primed their candidates with a short story about either life insurance policies or (for the control group) the imports and exports of a certain country. Then, they had the subjects try to complete a list of partially-spelled words specifically chosen so that they had two interpretations—one morbid, the other benign. The only pair I remember was skull and skill, both derivable from S**LL.
Then, to get the cross-cultural study, they found these word pairs in modern Hebrew! How cool is that! I should dig that study up again. I wonder if they used the truth/death similarity exploited by the story of the Golem.
Sheldon Solomon, one of the big names behind terror management theory, was the one who conducted the WTC study. He also did a related experiment in the same study where he made people think about their own deaths and found they were more likely to vote Bush afterwards. I think there’s a description at the same link. Good catch.
That’s unfortunate. I was hoping for more than one clique, but it looks like my half-remembered study “Evidence for terror management theory, part II” (annoyingly not free) is by roughly the same group of people as the WTC study you cited.
There’s a relatively new branch of psychology called Terror Management Theory that specializes the general phenomena cited above for instances where one is reminded of one’s mortality. I’ve only read a couple journal articles in the field, and I’m not a psychologist, but one experimental design in particular struck a cord in me.
I’m no longer certain of the study, but they primed their candidates with a short story about either life insurance policies or (for the control group) the imports and exports of a certain country. Then, they had the subjects try to complete a list of partially-spelled words specifically chosen so that they had two interpretations—one morbid, the other benign. The only pair I remember was skull and skill, both derivable from S**LL.
Then, to get the cross-cultural study, they found these word pairs in modern Hebrew! How cool is that! I should dig that study up again. I wonder if they used the truth/death similarity exploited by the story of the Golem.
Sheldon Solomon, one of the big names behind terror management theory, was the one who conducted the WTC study. He also did a related experiment in the same study where he made people think about their own deaths and found they were more likely to vote Bush afterwards. I think there’s a description at the same link. Good catch.
That’s unfortunate. I was hoping for more than one clique, but it looks like my half-remembered study “Evidence for terror management theory, part II” (annoyingly not free) is by roughly the same group of people as the WTC study you cited.