Terror Management and Meaning There are many ways to explain human nature, its good parts and its bad parts. One of the very few commonalities in human experience is death, as the periods between birth and death differ based on culture, social status, location, and many other factors. Although there are many theories that attempt to explain how and why humans react to death in certain ways, in this article the focus will be on terror management theory, a theory defined by Ernest Becker in an attempt to explain how memories subliminals of death influence people. in ways that cause them to develop unique cultural choices and artifacts, in part to fill the spaces around birth and death through which all humans must find their way. While many psychologists and philosophers subscribe to this theory, there are others who compete with it in attempting to explain the human reaction to mortality and death. One of these competing theories is Meaningful Management Theory, a similar school of thought that states that instead of remembering the death causing panic and extreme reactions, it encourages people to find or give meaning to their lives and to strive to be at height of social expectations in order to be satisfied enough with one's life to accept the inevitability of death. It is not difficult to bring both of these theories together into a single ideal applied to everyday life, but from a scientific point of view they are kept separate as they are considered competing theories. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of the many sources of controversy over Becker's theories stems from academic concern over his reputation. Many schools and journals rejected Becker for a long time before he was able to find a permanent school to teach and a journal to publish his work. This is mainly because the theory was proposed before any testing. Much of the progress made regarding his reputation came after he and his colleagues performed tests that sought to prove the terrorism management theory. Although the methods used in their tests were mostly valid, much of the theory still operates on assumptions and speculation regarding the function of the human psyche and may be profoundly influenced by the narrow demographic group from which they were often sampled. This uncertainty contributed heavily to the fact that journals were reluctant to publish the study, but as more and more tests were performed on various groups, by different researchers, returning the same results, the theory gained some traction within the work academic. Most people in sociological or psychological fields are at least aware of the theory now, whether they agree with it or not. Although many researchers have used many methods to try to prove or disprove Becker's work, the most notable example of this is in the study titled A Hot New Way to Measure Aggression: Hot Sauce Allocation, by Joel D. Lieberman, Sheldon Solomon , Jeff Greenberg and Holly A. McGregor, some of whom were Becker's colleagues. In this study, researchers sought to overcome the challenge of allowing individuals to assert aggression without causing long-term harm to the harmed individual. They overcame this problem by allowing attackers to express their intent to harm by assigning varying amounts of hot sauce to the victim. In this study it was found that the attackers who receivedSubliminal reminders of one's own death gave their victim significantly more hot sauce than control groups, supporting the idea that death reminders, even subliminal ones, increase aggression overall and toward others. Although it is an effective measure for this theory and many other theories that require the measurement of aggression between consenting subjects, it cannot be applied to the Management of Meaning, since that theory does not work on the basis of aggression towards others. In the case of the Management of Meaning Theory, some scholars who examined Becker's theory thought that since an effective study method and an initial hypothesis had been used, the interpretation of the results was lacking. This gave rise to the alternative interpretation called Meaning Management. This stated that while Becker had discovered something in his research, the idea that his findings indicated that there is no escape from death denial was incorrect. People who followed the Meaningful Management school of thought proposed that instead of endless denial, one can find peace with death, which occurs primarily through creating the culture and meaning of one's individual life, which then spreads slowly through society. This explains the cultural development cited in Terror Management, without imposing the idea of ​​infinite denial on those who are comfortable with their own death, or looking at the theory as an explanation of aggression in society at large. It focuses instead on the portion of existence between birth and death and how humans move through that portion of their lives in all the different ways shaped by culture and experience. The first article discussed is Death Grip, by John B. Judis. This article examines the application of terrorism management theory, as defined by Becker, to the 2004 election and the reaction to the president's role in the immediate aftermath of 9/11; discusses a study that works on the hypothesis that terrorism management theory can be used to explain the outcome of the 2004 election and the president's approval rating after 9/11 despite the fact that it seemed an unusual outcome compared to past political climate of the country at that time. The article provided about this study does not explicitly state the methods used to ascertain the results stated below, however you can gain a basic understanding from what is provided in the article and an understanding of the scientific processes typically used for psychological or psychological research. sociological. fields of study. As with the aforementioned hot sauce study, most of the studies conducted were conducted by or in collaboration with Becker's colleagues, which provides evidence of a clear understanding of the theory being tested and a solid history of scientific practice, as well as a basic agreement with the theory being tested. This article examines the events of 9/11 and terrorist threats (or perceived threats, such as gay marriage) as real-life examples of the mortality exercises used by psychologists to demonstrate terrorism management, and were later used as signals for remind subjects of their mortality. It is also based in part on a study conducted at Rutgers University examining liberal and conservative opinion of Bush after using 9/11 as a mortality signal. This was followed up by examining participants' actual ratings. While details of the study are not provided, the paper considers it to be scientifically valid. In tests, those who were reminded of their deaths through subliminal references to 9/11 havereported greater satisfaction with Bush than those who were not reminded of the death, likely because this gave them the ability to assign importance and control to a single figure so they felt less like there was no control. Next, the researchers examined the participants' voting results, which found that those in control were less likely to vote for Bush than those in the other group, regardless of political preferences. The only major problem with this study is the group the subjects came from. The subjects were almost exclusively college-age students at the same school, which has the potential to skew political beliefs based on how liberal or conservative the location and school are. It may also be of questionable ethics to have influenced the outcome of several votes, even if the result was minor, but there was no effective way to account for this before it happened, so it is more critical for future studies than a criticism of this particular study. Terrorism management theory can be applied to real-life events affecting one or more people, coming from different sources of distress in life. In this case, it was effective to apply his study to the 2004 election and 9/11 as it deeply affected many people across the nation and was a largely politicized event directly tied to the current presidential administration. By using terrorism management to explain this outcome, the study may ignore critical factors outside the United States and ignore the war that followed 9/11 as part of the explanation for the election outcome. Overall, this article agrees and supports the terror management theory and believes that it is highly applicable to the situations mentioned above, as well as any comparable situation centered on subliminal memories of death that may emerge in everyday life. It does not examine terrorism management applied to less widespread phenomena, so it is unrealistic to apply this study to smaller or individual events that are not universal to all people. Death, however, is universal to all humans, so in the realm of death, the theory holds. The second article discussed is titled Beyond Terror And Denial: The Positive Psychology of Death Acceptance, by Paul Wong and Adrian Tomer. This article examines the difference between terror management theory and meaning management theory in the context of American culture in the post-9/11 era. This article examines the management of terrorism from a more negative or critical light. The claim that terror management may not be the best explanation for why humans behave this way regarding death. The article examines how terror management theory can be used to explain certain cultural phenomena such as widespread death denial, but is limited as a personal philosophy due to the fact that people should work to accept death through philosophies such as the theory of meaning management. This document does not refer to any specific study and focuses more on the challenge of managing terrorism as it has been defined and supported by other documents. Similar to the last study, the method of presentation here leaves out much of the scientific methods used, so it is not possible to say for sure what the scientific limitations of the study might be. Nonetheless, it seems that the main point is that, although Terror Management is highly applicable to post-9/11 sociological phenomena, it is not the only.