#sheldon solomon

Sheldon Solomon symposium

Published on 11 Apr 2017

Social psychologist Sheldon Solomon explains how we manage our existential terror of death through the creation and maintenance of culture – i.e. all the beliefs and behaviors that give us a sense that life has meaning and that we have value. The study of those coping mechanisms is known as Terror Management Theory – as in how we manage the lifelong anxiety that’s born of our terror of death.

"If we were immortal, then life would be meaningless, because nothing would be of consequence. Certainly one way of taking the edge off the prospect of our inevitable demise is to ponder how much more horrendous it would be if we persisted in perpetuity. And yet, if you told me I had X number of days left to live, I would lobby for X plus one."

- Psychologist Sheldon Solomon

in mid-october, i finally started reading this book, which was co-written by sheldon solomon who was my advisor, three-time-professor, research colleague, and number one homie in college. sheldon & his boys developed terror management theory, an extremely important theory in social psych that involves how we deal with anxiety related to awareness of our mortality. this year, they published a book summarizing their findings.

Five Books: One interesting thing that comes up in your book is the impact on individuals. Fear of death could drive you to do lots of exercise and be healthy, or it could drive you to smoke and drink too much. How does that work?

Sheldon Solomon: It works in two ways. Firstly, it depends on cultural context. For example, if you live in a culture where smoking cigarettes is considered to be desirable or manly or suave…

Five Books: Like France.

Sheldon Solomon: Then, in those cultures, death reminders make people smoke more. Equally, if you live in a culture, as in the US, in Florida, where people who are tanned are considered beautiful, then death reminders will make people say they're going to go to the tanning booth. That's one dimension. Another, which is a little bit more complex, is that whether or not you're consciously aware that death is on your mind alters your reactions. So, for example, when people know they're thinking about death, and you tell them that being in the sun is bad, they say, ‘I need some sunscreen.' A few minutes later, when they're no longer thinking about their mortality, those whose self-esteem is based on their appearance, say, 'I want less sunscreen.' So there's really a host of factors that modulate these outcomes.