http://www.xba-ucla.com/cdn/media/newscientist.htm

Here we are, the only animals on the planet capable of anticipating the day when we will no longer exist, yet mostly we ignore this insight. Why are we not constantly paralysed with fear? Many have never even considered this question. But some psychologists argue that the fear of death does in fact take centre stage in most of our thoughts and behaviours. The thought of death is so terrifying, they say, that our minds have evolved mechanisms to repress this fear and these are at the root of how we construct our societies, how we treat others, and the way we see ourselves.

This idea underpins a school of thought called terror management theory. TMT claims to explain our reactions to events that threaten the veneer of permanence and meaning that we put on the world. It makes sense of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001: the immediate hike in sales of star-spangled banners, the increase in xenophobia and the way Americans rallied behind a president who until then had been seen by many as failing. More importantly, say TMT advocates, being able to predict how people respond when brought face to face with their own mortality should allow us to cultivate our nobler instincts such as tolerance, altruism and creativity, and curb more sinister ones such as prejudice, hatred and aggression.

http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070827&s=judis082707

Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczyn- ski first presented a summary of Becker’s ideas at the Society for Experimental Social Psychology in 1984. As they talked, the three later wrote, “well-known psychologists jostled each other vigorously to escape.” Afterwards, they submitted their take on Becker to The American Psychologist and were peremptorily turned down. “I have no doubt that these ideas are of absolutely no interest to any psychologist, alive or dead,” the journal’s reviewer replied. Later, the journal’s editor told the three psychologists that, if they wanted to be taken seriously in their profession, they would have to find ways to test their ideas experimentally. And that’s what they proceeded to do.

Their first experiment was published in 1989. To test the hypothesis that recognition of mortality evokes “worldview defense"--their term for the range of emotions, from intolerance to religi- osity to a preference for law and order, that they believe thoughts of death can trigger--they assembled 22 Tucson municipal court judges. They told the judges they wanted to test the relationship between personality traits and bail decisions, but, for one group, they inserted in the middle of the personality questionnaire two exercises meant to evoke awareness of their mortality. One asked the judges to “briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you”; the other required them to “jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead.” They then asked the judges to set bail in the hypothetical case of a prostitute whom the prosecutor claimed was a flight risk. The judges who did the mortality exercises set an average bail of $455. The control group that did not do the exercises set it at an average of $50. The psychologists knew they were onto something.