Podcast appearances and mentions of tom pyszczynski

I am pumped for this episode of the podcast! We have a truly enlightening discussion with the pioneers of Terror Management Theory (TMT), Dr. Sheldon Solomon, Dr. Jeff Greenberg, and Dr. Tom Pyszczynski. Terror Management Theory, a groundbreaking concept in psychology, explores how humans cope with the inherent awareness of their mortality. Developed in the 1980s, this theory has significantly influenced various fields, including social psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Dr. Sheldon Solomon, Dr. Jeff Greenberg, and Dr. Tom Pyszczynski, through their extensive research and groundbreaking experiments, have uncovered profound insights into how humans navigate existential fears, shape their beliefs, and construct cultural systems to manage the terror of death. Join us as we embark on a thought-provoking journey, exploring the origins of Terror Management Theory, its implications for understanding human behaviour, and its relevance in today's world. Get ready Mind-Maters to delve into the depths of the human psyche and gain a deeper understanding of what drives our thoughts, actions, and beliefs. Here are some of my favourite quotes from their book ‘The Worm at the Core': “The twin motives of affirming the correctness of our worldviews and demonstrating our personal worth combine to protect us from the uniquely human fear of inevitable death.” “Rituals, then, help manage existential terror by superseding natural processes and fostering the illusion that we control them.” “We have to believe in our own truths to sustain the precarious view that life is meaningful and that we are significant, enduring beings. “One culture is always a potential menace to another,” Becker observed, “because it is a living example that life can go on heroically within a value framework totally alien to one's own.” If the Aborigines' belief that magical ancestors metamorphosed into humans after becoming lizards is credible, then the idea that God created the world in six days, and Adam in his image, must be suspect.” “Yalom, following Austrian-born Israeli philosopher Martin Buber, calls it an I-thou relationship rather than an I-it one. By getting to know someone as a whole person rather than a need fulfiller, you can come to realise that the other person as just as ultimately alone as you are. But you now have that in common. Once you accept the limited knowledge you can have of each other, you can then feel close to and love someone, and be loved by them.” “Somehow we need to fashion worldviews that yield psychological security, like the rock, but also promote tolerance and acceptance of ambiguity, like the hard place.” And finally, here is their suggestion for living a good life: “Come to terms with death. Really grasp that being mortal, while terrifying, can also make our lives sublime by infusing us with courage, compassion, and concern for future generations. Seek enduring significance through your own combination of meanings and values, social connections, spirituality, personal accomplishments, identifications with nature, and momentary experiences of transcendence. Promote cultural worldviews that provide such paths while encouraging tolerance of uncertainty and others who harbour different beliefs.”

Sheldon Solomon is an American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Solomon is best known for developing terror management theory, along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski. This theory is concerned with how humans deal with their own sense of mortality.Today we talk all about existential themes and how our mortality affects our psychology.We also discuss - the concept of death anxiety and terror management theory in some depth, the relationship between mortality and the meaning we extract from our lives, the right way to approach our mortality to improve our mental health, the relationship between death anxiety and political attitudes,the importance of self-esteem in getting through the ups and downs of life and many other topicsInterviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi - Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcastJoin Our Mailing List! - https://thinkingmindpod.aidaform.com/mailinglistsignupSUPPORT: buymeacoffee.com/thinkingmind

Sheldon Solomon is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College. He is best known for developing terror management theory with Tom Pyszczynski and Jeff Greenberg, which explores human psychology and mortality. In this episode, Robinson and Sheldon discuss Ernest Becker's groundbreaking book The Denial of Death, how it influenced him and his collaborators, and how they have studied—with the tools of contemporary social psychology—how humans are affected by their sense of mortality. The Worm at the Core: https://a.co/d/7p05yA6 OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:51 Introduction 03:33 Discovering Ernest Becker 08:29 What Is Self-Esteem? 19:04 Freud and the Denial of Death 27:20 Man and the Heroic Journey 46:41 Where Was Becker Wrong? 54:44 What Is Terror Management Theory? 01:06:26 Children's Fear of Death 01:10:23 A History of Death Denial 01:14:19 Possible Criticisms 01:18:00 A Prescriptive Dimension to Death Denial Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support

Sheldon Solomon is an American social psychologist at Skidmore College. He is known for developing terror management theory, along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, which is concerned with how humans deal with their own sense of mortality.

Professor Sheldon Solomon is the Ross Professor for Interdisciplinary Studies at Skidmore College, New York. Professor Sheldon is one of the true pioneers in the fields of social and evolutionary psychology. Best known for developing terror management theory (TMT), along with Jess Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon and colleagues have revolutionised our understanding of how humans deal with their own sense of mortality and the often destructive effects of ‘death denial' on individual and collective behaviour. An engaging speaker and raconteur, in more recent years Sheldon has turned his attention to how death anxiety might be related to the anthropocene and the insatiable appetite of humans for more, whether that be cheap energy or lethal consumption. In this conversation we talk about why death denial is so pervasive, evidence underpinning TMT, death and the Hobbesian imperative in global politics, hope without optimism, Epicurus, Heidegger and much, much more. Solomon can be found here: https://www.skidmore.edu/psychology/faculty/solomon.php We discussed: ‘Death Denial in the Anthropocene' In the book: K. Zywert & Stephen Quilley (eds.), Health in the Anthropocene: Living Well on a Finite Planet (University of Toronto Press, 2020): https://utorontopress.com/9781487524142/health-in-the-anthropocene/ The Worm at the Core: On The Role of Death in Life (with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski) (Penguin/Random House, 2015): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/170217/the-worm-at-the-core-by-sheldon-solomon-jeff-greenberg-and-tom-pyszczynski/ Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (Free Press/Macmillan, 1973): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death Flight from Death, 2003 documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_from_Death

Sheldon Solomon is a social psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Along with his colleagues Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, he wrote 'The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life', a book which examines how humans deal with their own sense of mortality. Inspired by the work of the cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, Sheldon has been working for many years to understand how the uniquely human awareness of mortality motivates every individual and societal action. Don't forget to like and subscribe! 'The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life' - https://www.amazon.com.au/Worm-Core-Role-Death-Life/dp/1400067472 Julius Killerby's Website - https://juliuskillerby.com

This month is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The nation continues to wrestle with the traumatic effects these many years later. In this podcast we unpack the psychology with Tom Pyszczynski, co-author with Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg of In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror. In this book the authors analyze reactions to the attacks through the lens of terror management theory, an existential psychological model that explains why humans react the way they do to the threat of death and how this reaction influences their post-threat cognition and emotion. This is also manifest in evangelicals in the shift in their post-9/11 perspectives on Muslims, as well as in their reactions to those perceived as promoting syncretism, such as Rev. David Benke, and Larycia Hawkins. 

Sheldon Solomon is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College. He is best known for developing terror management theory along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, which is concerned with how humans deal with their own sense of mortality. He studies the effects of the uniquely human awareness of death on human behaviors. He is co-author of several books, including the one we’ll be discussing today – The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. I was initially drawn to Prof. Solomon’s work because I listened to a three-hour long podcast interview between him and Lex Fridman. It was the most enlightening podcast I had listened to on the Lex Fridman Show, without exaggeration. That was a few months ago during a time when I was very confused and stressed. I was working nonstop every day and deciding between whether to pursue an economics PhD or go into the “real world” to work for a few years first before reassessing. Prof. Solomon’s ideas from taking a leap of faith in life to confronting the possibility of death were truly profound and changed a lot of my thinking back then.

The identification of the ego with power structures greater than itself, raises a whole host of questions around ego identity as healthy vs unhealthy; around tribal identity and tribalism and its transformation with the emergence of civilization. What role does mythology play relative to this complex set of issues? What about the psychology activated when confronting civilizational collapse? Are there psychologies that recognize consciousness beyond that of the conventional ego? References Civilizational collapse gets named on a few occasions, explicitly citing Jared Diamond as best-known example. Joseph Tainter, 1988, “The collapse of complex societies”, is perhaps “the classic” that begins a subfield of study on the theme. Jared Diamond's book is from 2005: “Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed” Reference is made in this episode to conventional psychologies of the ego wherein health means well-adapted to society, over against more radical or spiritual psychologies that see the ego itself as the problem and society as problematic enough such that being adapted to it is unhealthy. Arguably, the whole psychodynamic tradition, from Freud to Jung as its founders, right up the whole field of “transpersonal psychology”, plays on the conventional/spiritual distinction. (See, for example, Freud's "Civilization and its discontents" (1930) from which this episode derives its title. ) Norman O. Brown brilliantly explored within psychoanalysis some of these themes in his works “Life against death: The psychoanalytical meaning of history” (1959) and “Love's Body” (1966) An example of that distinction (overt in the title already) is by Daniel Brown, Jack Engler, and Ken Wilber, 1986, “Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development” A favorite psychologist of mine (i.e. Chris) who articulates the notion of being "positively maladjusted" to unhealthy society, alongside the theme of ego-death or “disintegration” as potentially positive is Kazimierz Dabrowski (“Positive disintegration”, 1964). See the website https://positivedisintegration.com/ Terror-management theory also gets mentioned: for this theory, see Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski, 2015, “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life”. https://ernestbecker.org/resources/terror-management-theory/

Being human is pretty great. Our brains are large and sophisticated, which allows us to think and do things in ways that other animals cannot. With this intelligence, however, comes an existential burden: an awareness of our own mortality. In this episode, I interview social psychologist Sheldon Solomon. Sheldon Solomon is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College in New York. He studies the effects of death awareness on human thoughts, feelings, and behavior. He, along with his colleagues Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, developed terror management theory, which posits that our awareness of our own mortality affects our daily lives in profound ways. You can read more about terror management theory in their book, The Worm at the Core: On The Role of Death in Life. You will also hear parts of a conversation with my three-year-old son as he realizes for the first time that he too is mortal.Music: “Glitter” and “Wavy Glass” by Podington Bear and “Come As You Were” by Blue Dot SessionsThank you so much to Sheldon Solomon for decades of groundbreaking research and for the eye-opening conversation.And thank you to my beautiful son for your sensitivity, your curiosity, and your depth.

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski wrote a book called "The Worm at the Core: the Role of Death in Life" where they explored the concept of "death anxiety". If you are interested in researching about the subject, I think you will enjoy the reading.In times of pandemic, the presence of death occupies space in our minds. It might be important to talk about subjects that makes us uncomfortable.

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg e Tom Pyszczynski escreveram um livro chamado "The Worm at the Core:the Role of Death in Life". Eles exploram o conceito de "ansiedade de morte". Se você se interessar em pesquisar mais sobre esse tema, acho que você vai curtir a leitura.Em tempos de pandemia, a presença da morte ocupa mais espaço na nossa mente. Pode ser importante falar sobre o que causa desconforto.

Some very interesting things happen to our attitudes and behaviours when we're reminded we won't be around forever; at least not like this. Dan and Akin squeeze a research paper looking for answers of what those changes are and why they matter. - Research Paper: The Scrooge Effect: Evidence That Mortality Salience Increases Prosocial Attitudes and Behavior by Eva Jones, Jeff Schimel, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski

Tonight’s show is called, “2 Mins to Midnight (Terror Management Theory).” Terror Management Theory is both a social and evolutionary psychology theory originally proposed by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski, and codified in their 2015 book “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.” According to the APA Dictionary, it is a theory proposing that control of death anxiety is the primary function of society and the main motivation in human behavior. Tonight, we will discuss: History and Explanation of Terror Management TheoryCultural Values and their Role in Terror Management Theory Rebuttals and Related Theories Summary and Resources :We'll start off the evening with some topic-relevant Classic Rock played by Dr. Mathis, followed by Classic Rock trivia in "The Rock & Roll Shrink Recalls," followed by our topic discussion. Please follow our bi-weekly, Wednesday evening shows, at 11 pm EST/EDT. We will have a new topic for you in two weeks!

We also discuss how thinking about death influences politics. Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski are professors of psychology at Skidmore College, the University of Arizona, and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, respectively. Dr. Pyscznzski is a distinguished professor at the University of Colorado They have been collaborating on research and writing projects for more than thirty years. Their award-winning and National Science Foundation–funded work has infused existential thought into modern psychological science, using state-of-the-art methods to explore terrain long thought to be beyond the scope of scientific scrutiny. This integration of different approaches has led to new ways of thinking about culture, self-esteem, and the factors that steer people toward their most noble and ignoble actions.

DescriptionProduct DescriptionA transformative, fascinating theory—based on robust and groundbreaking experimental research—reveals how our unconscious fear of death powers almost everything we do, shining a light on the hidden motives that drive human behavior More than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James dubbed the knowledge that we must die “the worm at the core” of the human condition. In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Denial of Death, arguing that the terror of death has a pervasive effect on human affairs. Now authors Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski clarify with wide-ranging evidence the many ways the worm at the core guides our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage. The Worm at the Core is the product of twenty-five years of in-depth research. Drawing from innovative experiments conducted around the globe, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski show conclusively that the fear of death and the desire to transcend it inspire us to buy expensive cars, crave fame, put our health at risk, and disguise our animal nature. The fear of death can also prompt judges to dole out harsher punishments, make children react negatively to people different from themselves, and inflame intolerance and violence. But the worm at the core need not consume us. Emerging from their research is a unique and compelling approach to these deeply existential issues: terror management theory. TMT proposes that human culture infuses our lives with order, stability, significance, and purpose, and these anchors enable us to function moment to moment without becoming overwhelmed by the knowledge of our ultimate fate. The authors immerse us in a new way of understanding human evolution, child development, history, religion, art, science, mental health, war, and politics in the twenty-first century. In so doing, they also reveal how we can better come to terms with death and learn to lead lives of courage, creativity, and compassion. Written in an accessible, jargon-free style, The Worm at the Core offers a compelling new paradigm for understanding the choices we make in life—and a pathway toward divesting ourselves of the cultural and personal illusions that keep us from accepting the end that awaits us all. Praise for The Worm at the Core “The idea that nearly all human individual and cultural activity is a response to death sounds far-fetched. But the evidence the authors present is compelling and does a great deal to address many otherwise intractable mysteries of human behaviour. This is an important, superbly readable and potentially life-changing book.” —The Guardian (U.K.) “A neat fusion of ideas borrowed from sociology, anthropology, existential philosophy and psychoanalysis.” —The Herald (U.K.) “Deep, important, and beautifully written, The Worm at the Core describes a brilliant and utterly original program of scientific research on a force so powerful that it drives our lives.” —Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Stumbling on Happiness “As psychology becomes increasingly trivial, devolving into the promotion of positive-thinking platitudes, The Worm at the Core bucks the trend. The authors present—and provide robust evidence for—a psychological thesis with disturbing personal as well as political implications.” —John Horgan, author of The End of War and director of the Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of TechnologyReview“The idea that nearly all human individual and cultural activity is a response to death sounds far-fetched. But the evidence the authors present is compelling and does a great deal to address many otherwise intractable mysteries of human behaviour. This is an important, superbly readable and potentially life-changing book. . . . The lesson contained within The Worm at the Core suggests one should confront mortality in order to live an authentic life, as the Epicureans and the Stoics suggested many centuries ago.” —The Guardian (U.K.) “A neat fusion of ideas borrowed from sociology, anthropology, existential philosophy and psychoanalysis . . . [The] sweep-it-under-the-carpet approach to death is facile and muddle-headed. More than that, it has consequences more far-reaching than we could possibly imagine because, as [the authors] see it, death informs practically every aspect of human existence. From the way we organise our societies to the moral codes we live by, even down to how we have sex and what rituals and emotions we ascribe to it, death is the bedrock.” —The Herald (U.K.) “Deep, important, and beautifully written, The Worm at the Core describes a brilliant and utterly original program of scientific research on a force so powerful that it drives our lives, but so frightening that we cannot think clearly about it. This book asks us to, compels us to, and then shows us how—by shining the light of reason on the heart of human darkness.” —Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Stumbling on Happiness “As psychology becomes increasingly trivial, devolving into the promotion of positive-thinking platitudes, The Worm at the Core bucks the trend. The authors present—and provide robust evidence for—a psychological thesis with disturbing personal as well as political implications. This is an important book.” —John Horgan, author of The End of War and director of the Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of Technology “This is a wonderfully (terrifyingly) broad and deep study of most everything we know or have thought about death. It carries Ernest Becker's work a long way further down the road.” —Sam Keen, author of Faces of the EnemyAbout the AuthorSheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski are professors of psychology at Skidmore College, the University of Arizona, and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, respectively. They have been collaborating on research and writing projects for more than thirty years. Their award-winning and National Science Foundation–funded work has infused existential thought into modern psychological science, using state-of-the-art methods to explore terrain long thought to be beyond the scope of scientific scrutiny. This integration of different approaches has led to new ways of thinking about culture, self-esteem, and the factors that steer people toward their most noble and ignoble actions.

Cass and Bob have a conversation with former guest Benjamin Hicks. He was our first guest on episode 3, after Bob and Cass interviewed each other on episodes 1 and 2.  Ben is one of those guys that is just a sweetheart. He’s humble, he’s a beta, he’s got a big heart, he wants the best for everyone. He’s got a conservative brain and a brilliant brain. He’s a career computer guy nerd genius, and we love him. You can hear his deconverstion story there, and today we’re discussing estrangement, animosity, and othering that is so prevalent in today’s western zeitgeist. We saw it in the Brexit, we’re seeing it in the public appeal of Trump’s racist rhetoric. In what universe would someone so incompetent and with such lack of self-awareness rise to popularity like he has? And the tension between the Hillary supporters and the Sanders supporters within the democratic party. The estrangement and distrust between black and brown people with police officers. The widening chasm between the rich and the poor in class warfare. The amassing of guns because we’re so scared. The success of terrorists to truly infect the world with terror. It’s working! When people are out in public, in traffic, out shopping, we don’t feel the brotherhood of man, we don’t feel the warmth of community—unless we’ve quarantined ourselves in gated communities with only people of our own ethnicity. These are subjects that scholars have tried to understand for millenia. Scholars that look at the brutality of the world and human depravity and instead of just accepting it as the norm they’ve asked questions like why do we act this way? What narratives are framing our paradigms that put as at such odds? I personally expected that once I got out of elementary school, this childish behavior would finally stop. It didn’t. So I thought, well, after high school, that’s when people will be mature enough not to act this way. Nope. College? The workforce? Adulthood? Nope. Maturity has not happened to us yet. And today, we discuss the works of two scholars who’ve come up with some theories, supported by research, that prescribe some insights. This talk is far from a comprehensive view of their work, so I want to prescribe the work of two scholars for those that are truly interested in some possible solutions to our current social discord: One is Jonathan Haidt. He’s a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. His academic specialization is the psychology of morality and the moral emotions. Haidt is the author of two books: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006) and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012), which became a New York Times bestseller. He was named one of the "top global thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the "top world thinkers" by Prospect magazine.  The second is Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropology who earned his PhD from Syracuse University and became a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. In 1973 he published The Denial of Death for which he earned a Pulitzer Prize. A year later he died of cancer at age 49.  Also, the book, The Worm at the Core, by doctors Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, is about the research done to support Becker’s theories.   We taped this episode on July 29th, 2016. If you’re liking our show, please subscribe to it, give it 5 stars, and/or leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  Also, you can support us monetarily on a per episode basis through our Patreon page. That’s www.patreon.com/eapodcast. Or leave a donation through PayPal at our website, www.everyonesagnostic.com. Credits: "Towering Mountain of Ignorance" intro by Hank Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3v3S82TuxU Intro bumper "Never Know" by Jack Johnson   Ben’s talk at Unitarian Universalist Church in Murfreesboro The full text of Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death” including the intro by Sam Keen which Cass reads on this episode Episode 52 of Everyone’s Agnostic podcast featuring Ernest Becker’s book and a lecture by Sheldon Solomon The Ernest Becker Foundation Jonathan Haidt’s Ted Talk titled “The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives.” Haidt’s 6 moral foundations Newt Gingrich changed it to a 3 day work week so that politicians spent much less time together.  Imposter syndrome and the Dunning Kruger effect NY Times article by Frank Bruni, “How Facebook Warps Our World.” “But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past” by Chuck Klosterman THE BIG SORT, BY BILL BISHOP with Robert G. Cushing The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Adam Ruins Everything - Why the Electoral College Ruins Democracy Adam describes how political parties are able to predetermine election winners through a process called gerrymandering. Haidt at the Museum of Sex: How disgust shapes our morality.  http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/12/22/why-polarization-matters/ http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/17/the-seven-habits-of-highly-depolarizing-people/  

Sheldon Solomon is a psychologist and professor of social psychology at Skidmore College, best known for developing Terror Management Theory, along with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski which is concerned with how humans deal with our own sense of mortality. Solomon co-authored the book The Worm at the Core: On the role of Death in Life with Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski.

Unlike the character in the movie The Sixth Sense, we actually don’t see dead people. Westerners go to great lengths to excise thoughts about death (real death, that is, not movie death) or being in the presence of death. Sheldon Solomon, on the other hand, routinely thinks about the unthinkable, and how humans behave differently when the unthinkable forces its way into their thoughts. Solomon, a social psychologist at New York’s Skidmore College, along with two other experimental social psychologists, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, developed the idea of ‘terror management theory’ more than three decades ago to test out scientifically how the mere specter of mortality alters behavior. Here, in conversation with Social Science Bites’ Nigel Warburton, Solomon specifically addresses the fear of death and how his views were derived from the earlier work of Ernest Becker. Becker, Solomon explains, called the fear of death the “main spring of human activity.” Nonetheless we don’t want to face death directly, Solomon adds, and so, “Just like most of us are unaware of the internal dynamics of the engine that drives our car, we are equally unaware of what it is that impels us to do what we do every day.” Various experiments bear that out. When primed with the thought of death,  judges reminded of death mete out tougher penalties, American voters shifted their prospective votes from a liberal to a conservative,  shoppers shift from bargain brands to status symbols. “And now the real work can commence,” he explains, “which is the nuances: what are the personality variables that influence how vigorously and how defensively one will react? And we know some of those. We know that insecurely-attached and highly-neurotic people respond more defensively when they are reminded of death. But now, we’re in the process, in part we’re studying people who are terminally ill in hospice settings because we know that there has to be tremendous variation - that some people are more comfortable with the prospect of the inevitability of death than others. That’s really what we want to get a handle on right now.” Solomon earned a bachelor’s degree from Franklin and Marshall College and a doctorate from the University of Kansas. He’s taught at Skidmore, where he’s currently the Ross Professor for Interdisciplinary Studies, since 1980 after joining the faculty at age 26. (He also co-owns a restaurant in the Skidmore’s home of Saratoga Springs.) Along with Greenberg and Pyszczynski he wrote the 2003 book In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror, in which terror management theory (which is not in itself about terrorism) is used to analyze the roots of terrorism.  

On this episode I talk with social psychologist Michael Johns about terror management theory, a principle developed by psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski off the works of anthropologist Ernest Becker. The theory connects humans' fear of death with our cultural values (very interesting stuff, may make you question your own worldview, listen with caution).Note: this episode lists the museum's email address incorrectly! Please send all correspondence to info@morbidanatomymuseum.org to avoid losing it to the aether.