AP photo/Ross D. Franklin
In their latest episode of Reasonable Doubts (episode 51), podcasters Luke Galen, Dave Fletcher and Jeremy Beahan, all college professors in Grand Forks, Michigan, discussed Terror Management Theory and how it relates to the current debate over healthcare reform.
Terror Management Theory, according to Galen, has been gaining more acceptance in the last few years. Hundreds of studies have been conducted exploring it. According to social psychologists, we all have a fear of dying that we struggle to keep submerged by adopting a worldview that allows us to believe that we will enjoy some form of life after death. For some of us, life after death means that we have done something that will ensure we’ll be remembered. For others, it’s heaven.
The more we are forced to think about our own deaths, the harder we cling to our worldviews. Make us fear death–frighten us with a terrorist attack, for instance–and our worldviews, both political and religious, become more extreme (which helps explain the last eight years). It works in reverse as well. Poke a hole in our worldviews and we start to worry more about dying.
Here’s what all this has to do with health care: A good way to derail reform is to take a perfectly reasonable provision in the legislation, end of life counseling, and tell people it’s about the death panels. Scare conservatives with the idea that the government may decide they don’t deserve to go on living, and you get a bunch of ultra-conservatives screaming for President Obama’s head.
Why are the conservatives so much more vocal than liberals? Instruments that measure physiological responses to what psychologists call increased death salience–looking at photos that suggest death or writing about death–show that conservatives respond more strongly; they frighten more easily.
Studies seem to show that being conservative or liberal may be innate, as much a part of who a person is as any other aspect of personality. In fact, there’s a list of traits that tend to be present in conservatives in general: a need for order, simple answers, familiarity and stability. Conservatives also are usually more organized, and they keep their homes tidier. And because they need to believe in a real afterlife (heaven) instead of merely a symbolic one (being remembered), they also tend to believe in a deity, to be more religious.
Comments
Dorene, I can tell you that your article is one of the few I've read recently, that gives me some solace in the "cultural/religious war" that is going on right now. It makes sense. Strangely enough, it does make sense. I feel that, at least there is some science behind it. Science makes it tangible some how, and not so chaotic. Up until now, I couldn't figure out why seemingly rational people, would be so hateful towards each other. Now, I get it. Fear of death.
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