PSY336H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Terrycloth, Paul Tillich, Migraine
PSY336 Lec 07
Tuesday November 1, 2016
George Bush: we don’t want terrorists to achieve of their goals of scaring Americans such that
they don’t go shop anymore, so we encourage people to go shopping.
It seems ridiculous but it might have some rationale beyond it: to save US economy.
US have a consumer economy. If people stop shopping, then investors’ confidence will collapse
and economy will crash. Also at a psychological level, the quote has something profound to say:
something (9/11) just happened and it threatened the US territorial safety (usually shit happens in
Europe or Middle East; it’s “over there”). Symbols were destroyed – the World Trade Centre has
been destroyed, as well as the Pentagon, which was the centre of US military. When you get
attacked like this (attacked psychologically), you would want to defend yourself from
incongruent information (the fact that stuff doesn’t just happen “over there”), you need to find
ways to patch up your meaning system.
When something attacks your meaning system, you need to defend yourself. You need to patch
your meaning system one way or another. You can use self-affirmation as a “band-aid”: social
identities, national identities, etc.
We gonna talk about “meaning” today. Small “m” “meaning” (experiential). Finding meaning is
a self-defensive process. Piaget’s accommodation and assimilation into schema. Assimilative
processing incorporates attribution of the new info and assimilate it into your existing system.
Once you have some sense of meaning and coherence, you start defending it.
Prof story: when in grad school, lots of info are presented to him. So he got used to ideas being
presented to him. Then there’s this theory that’s presented really uncomfortably. This was the
terror-management theory. This is paradigm shifting theory.
Up to 1990, people just assumed that self-esteem is a foundational thing and it’s good. People
believed that people are motivated to increase and defend their self-esteem. Almost all
behaviours had been explained as rooted in self-esteem.
But the Terror-Management people asked that why do we need self-esteem anyway? Why do we
have such a deep need? Their reasoning was that, evolutionarily speaking, many years ago, we
developed culture, social organization, and our brains got more complicated, and we got the
PFC, which allowed us to think abstractly and interpret things. We can construe things different
ways. The downside of it is, as you can plan future, it’s possible to think far enough into a time
where you might not exist anymore. So it allows us to be aware of improvement. So they think
that the self evolved as a defense mechanism in response to the death threats. Prof’s rabbit
doesn’t have sense of death.
Aside: prof asks you a question, rate it on a scale of 1-5. 1 is “I have absolutely no idea” and 5 is
“I totally got it figured out.” The question is, what is the meaning of life.
Question 2, do you know what stuff brings meaning into your life.
Why was q2 easier than q1 in general? Maybe because the second q was framed in terms of
“self,” which is easier than the abstract q1. The high level universal “meaning” is scary to us,
it causes anxiety; but we know of concrete meanings in everyday life.
Terror Management people say that self-esteem is a defense that’s developed in response to the
terror of the fact that we will eventually die.
Human name, identity, family, goals, occupations, title, aspirations are adornments draped over
human body that’s no more permanent than any individual potato.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
We found these things to help us get through the day. We know what give us a sense of meaning
(because q2 is easier than q1).
They propose that people grab onto something to defend the terror of death, and such things are
people themselves (self-affirmation). They hypothesized that if you make mortality salient for
people, you should be able to drive self-affirmation processes. So they did experiments in which
they induced mortality salience (ex. Pass through cemetery, imagine your own death).
The hypothesis is that people will run to themselves. If they were collectivist, then they will
become more collectivist; if they were individualistic, then they will be more individualistic.
Hallow’s Monkeys – do they run to wired mom or cloth mom when they were scared?
Monkeys run away, but it’s more than just running away; they were running towards their moms.
They ran towards the terry-cloth mom. They ran towards their source of comfort and security.
Once they had their fear soothed (clung to mom), then their courage comes back – they start
trash talking the monster.
TMT says your self-esteem is your terry-cloth mom.
Results from mortality salience experiments:
You took a bunch of Australians, and you found that they become more individualistic when
mortality salience is induced. Japanese become more collectivistic when mortality salience is
induced.
Anti-attitudinal essays: ask Japanese to write anti-japan essays. People generally don’t like this,
but after mortality salience increase, people dislike it more; they defend their countries more.
In Americans, thinking about death makes Lexus more attractive than the metro.
Also, handgrip strength increases for people who have fitness as important identity of them when
they think about death.
People who identify as awesome drivers drive more risky after mortality salience induction,
because they think they can do that turn even if it might be a rough turn – because they overly
believe in their own abilities.
Basically, mortality salience threatens your image of self, and you will grab onto whatever
aspects of your self that’s available for you to strengthen. Ex. If your nationalistic belief was
available at the time, you will become more nationalistic.
Ian McGregor: questions TMT. He thinks in general, people want to be able to make sense of the
world. If you put them in situations of uncertainty, they don’t like it.
Experiment: for babies up to 10 months old, they have mom to interact with the baby
unemotionally. Usually you would mirror your babies’ emotions. If they were sad, then mom
usually is sad. So when mom came with stone face to change their diapers, this freaks babies out.
Babies try so hard initially to get mom’s attention; they first exaggerate their own expressions to
get mom to react. But mom still doesn’t react, then the babies completely freaks out.
So McGregor puts people into Uncertainty Induction, and he found almost same results. Ex. You
give people info that they can’t make sense of etc.
Steve Heine came along and came up with Meaning Maintenance Model.
You can shift people’s religious beliefs (undecided voters) by threatening their self-esteem,
mortality salience induction or uncertainty induction.
One way to threaten people self-esteem: you give people false feedback on IQ test, or just give
them a real hard IQ test. And then you can push people’s beliefs around.
Steve Heine integrates this into MMM.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
George bush: we don"t want terrorists to achieve of their goals of scaring americans such that they don"t go shop anymore, so we encourage people to go shopping. It seems ridiculous but it might have some rationale beyond it: to save us economy. If people stop shopping, then investors" confidence will collapse and economy will crash. Also at a psychological level, the quote has something profound to say: something (9/11) just happened and it threatened the us territorial safety (usually shit happens in. Symbols were destroyed the world trade centre has been destroyed, as well as the pentagon, which was the centre of us military. When you get attacked like this (attacked psychologically), you would want to defend yourself from incongruent information (the fact that stuff doesn"t just happen over there ), you need to find ways to patch up your meaning system. When something attacks your meaning system, you need to defend yourself.
