Good Friday noon Fellow Seekers,
See if you can figure out why New Republic Senior Editor John Judis believes experiments conducted by three psychologists like the one described just below provide a key to Pres. Bush’s political success from 2001 to 2005. In one experiment, the psychologists:
“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 designers of this experiment, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, are members of a relatively new subspecialty called political psychology. They have been working on the question of how an elevated fear of death and/or awareness of mortality affects one’s political behavior.
Their hypothesis, which they describe as “terror management theory,” holds that people who are — consciously or especially subconsciously, dealing with thoughts of their death, engage in behaviors that they call “worldview defense,” which comes out in a number of quasi-political instincts. As Judis summarized it:
“The mere thought of one’s mortality can trigger a range of emotions–from disdain for other races, religions, and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a heightened attraction to traditional mores.”
The Tucson judges who had been prompted to think about mortality wanted to set higher bail for prostitutes than those who hadn’t been prompted, perhaps because they were experiencing a “heightened attraction to traditional mores.”
In other experiments, the psychologists took various groups, prompted half to think about death, the other half not, and then looked for differences in their attitudes. They found that the death-thinkers were more patriotic (for example, in one experiment, more negative toward an essay that criticized the United States, in another experiment, showed “greater veneration for cultural icons like the flag,” more critical of those outside their own racial or ethnosectarian group (the group of Christian students who had been mortality prompted were more critical of an essay by a Jewish writer than those who had not been prompted) and even found that, “after doing the mortality exercises, conservatives took a much harsher view of liberals, and vice versa.”
After 9/11 — an event that prompted the whole nation to think about the fragility of life, the threat of random violence, the likelihood that someone was trying to kill them — the psychologists tried to figure out whether their concepts of “mortality salience” and “worldview defense” applied to the whole electorate might help explain the political success of George W. Bush. So they went at it directly:
“In October 2003, the three scholars, together with five colleagues, assembled 97 undergraduates at Rutgers to participate in what the students thought was a study of the relationship between personality and politics. One group was given the mortality exercises. The other wasn’t. They then read an essay expressing a ‘highly favorable opinion of the measures taken by President Bush with regards to 9/11 and the Iraqi conflict.’ It read, in part:
Personally I endorse the actions of President Bush and the members of his administration who have taken bold action in Iraq. I appreciate our President’s wisdom regarding the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power and his Homeland Security Policy is a source of great comfort to me. … We need to stand behind our President and not be distracted by citizens who are less than patriotic. Ever since the attack on our country on September 11, 2001, Mr. Bush has been a source of strength and inspiration to us all.
This was not the kind of statement that would appeal to most Rutgers undergraduates, and indeed, on average, members of the control group rated it unfavorably. But those who did the mortality exercises on balance favored the statement.”
If you find this intriguing, the full Judis piece, with the psych experiments described in more detail, is here. He doesn’t suggest that mortality-salience-provoking-worldview-defense is a permanent formula for political victory and talks about why it seems to have run out of steam at the moment.
This is pretty wild stuff, and gets into the much larger question, debated mostly by political scientists, of whether voter behavior is fundamentally rational or something else. And it’s probably enough weirdness for this beautiful Friday heading into the Labor Day weekend. I promise to come back to earth next week. But I’ll close with the observation that the way that Bush and his group talk about the terror threat hasn’t changed much, and generally couldn’t do a better job of provoking thoughts of danger and mortality if it was written for him by the three psychologists. (I don’t suggest that Bush and his speechwriters are basing their work on this psychological theory, only that it fits it beautifully.)
As recently as last week, right at the top of his speech to the VFW, Bush said:
“I stand before you as a wartime President. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, declared war on the United States of America. And war is what we’re engaged in. The struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it’s a struggle for civilization. We fight for a free way of life against a new barbarism — an ideology whose followers have killed thousands on American soil, and seek to kill again on even a greater scale.”
Kinda makes you want to think about mortality, pine for the good old days of moral clarity and traditional values, rally behind a charismatic leader, and take closer look at those not from your own circle, or doesn’t it? Have a great weekend.
It seems to me that this is one view of mortality, and a rather abstract one. Granted, the abstract concept of death leaves your imagination a lot of room to fill in details, which is more powerful. To me, anyone who has actually seen bodies riddled with bullets and bleeding in the street or watched corpses from a capsized boat wash ashore is going to have a very different view of mortality. A more real view.
Once you become a genuine survivor, as most combat veterans are, it seems that you are even less likely to see the world as a series of abstract threats. Yes, you may jump or otherwise over-react to a sharp noise or the sight of police disco lights. But these are specific threats. Something abstract is just much less important when your imagination has a very real event to focus on.
I think that is why old warriors are often the first ones to make peace. They know what the actual threat is, and work to minimize it if they can. People like Bush have a view of potential threats that is much more about imagination than reality. It’s also very cowardly. But that is the way our policy is run these days. You raise a good point.
Everyone should read Denial of Death by Ernest Becker - Pulitzer prize winner for general nonfiction. His follow up, Escape from Evil, should also be required reading.
thanks rob.
yes, judis says becker and denial of death was the starting point that these three psychologists have done. becker was an anthropoligist. cheers,
In Denial of Death Becker argued that man is the only creature who is aware of his own impending doom. He tried to prove that all of culture, religion and history was composed of men seeking immortality in one way or another. In Escape from Evil he tried to prove that the worst things that men have done to other men throughout history have been in the pursuit of doing good, i.e. seeking immortality for his or her people. It’s heavy stuff, but if you can slog though it it will leave you enlightened.
Excellent piece. Raises interesting questions. Assuming the hypothesis is correct, as it appears to be both from your writing and on from the piece I read on this in the Economist, what is an aspiring politician to do?
Now that this is more or less established fact, aren’t all sides more or less obligated to use this tactic, since the parties exist for the sole reason of wining elections and this tactic seems to be a valid mechanism by which to do this?
It seems kind of tasteless to me, personally, to lace my campaign literature with reminders of our sure eventual demise. If I don’t go ahead and do it anyway, it seems that I will fall victim to candidates who do. Weak.
Polinaut calls you the “high priest of political blogging in Minnesota”. High praise from a venerable source. Nicely done. Have a great holiday. Cheers.
This is also a theme that John Ralson Saul discusses in his book Voltaire’s Bastards. He says that the flight from a fear of death makes us accept leadership that seems to offer a “solution” by getting people to project their fear on to other groups: foreigners, other religions, other racial groups, etc. Since this fear can never be “solved,” it is continually ripe for exploitation by demagogues and false heroes.
Exactly, Spotty. Becker asks, “Immortality for whom?” The best example is Hitler (Godwin’s Law notwithstanding). He sought a 1,000 year Reich for Germans. Becker said a key question is , immortality for whom? Hitler thought the Russian serfs were subhuman. He devised a “science” of who is German, called Arianism, that came complete with “scientific” ways of telling who was one of them. This isn’t all rational. Hitler himself didn’t fit the description!
All of you guys are dealing with the fear of death as an abstract concept, however. If there was something specific that you were afraid of, I think your (and Becker’s) approach would be a wee bit different.
Apparently, life is good for ya. Mazeltov! Meanwhile, there are many people around the world who operate at a far more instinctual level because that’s what it takes to survive. I think you’d find they have a different reaction to this vague threat nonsense than the large number of Americans who are quite terrified of it.
In other words, if you’re rather sure someone actually *is* trying to kill you, all the above goes out the window. So if you wonder how the Iraqis feel, for example, … this ain’t it.
I think all of you from Minnesota will have to trust me on this, or at least think it through. I don’t think any of you are used to seeing death on a daily basis. It gets harder to avoid or abstract it when you do. I had big issues with Becker on this point, too.
That’s a good point, wabbit. Imminent threats of death *are* different. However, Becker argued the fear of death lies just below our consciousness, pretty much always. You don’t have to be afraid of dying this very moment to have that fear motivate your life. Becker argued that people, despite professing religious belief, don’t *really* believe it anymore. Hence the modern mediators of fear of death are large piles of money and medicine. Doctors, our new priests, even wear white robes.
Yes, rob, I think your point is well taken, and it’s what Bush is pushing as per the article we’re commenting on. I’m just saying that it’s a comment on how good our life is that we see it that particular way - not that this fear ever goes away, of course, just that it is an easy sell (as most bigger, better deals are) to a relatively safe middle class.
Bush’s comments are going to make zero sense to people who have to live with a more genuine fear of death that they encounter on a daily basis. Thus the gulf between the American Middle Class and the rest of the world actually becomes wider.
The article makes me wonder how much this fear is genuine and how much is accentuated for effect. Is Bush this fearful of his own mortality, or is this a Rovian trick? I can’t say. What I can tell ya is that our outlook on life is seriously disjointed from both the rest of the world and reality. We are damned dangerous bastards right now because we buy all this nonsense.
I just don’t want people to lose site of the fact that the load of BS Bush is pushing can’t work everywhere, and that it works so well here because our life is good. We can’t forget that it’s our success that makes us vulnerable to crap like Bush’s.
I totally agree wabbit. What good is “freedom” or “democracy” if you’re one of the million dead Iraqis? More appropriate to the discussion would be Maslow’s hierarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs). I would point out, however, that even people in dire circumstances no doubt have death denial mechanisms in place (however ineffective or meager), such as religion or family.
All the soccer moms in my neighborhood were for Bush.
I was really surprised at the results of the test.
I would have expected that thoughts of death might bring “Blessed are the merciful” to mind for these judges asked to reflect on their lives. Instead, just the opposite!
As one who has seen death, both expected and sudden, intimately, I agree with those commenters who suggest that frequent, sudden death and the threat of it make a difference in how one views this issue.
“…to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders,…”
Interesting. I know what is meant but, I’ll have to think about the duo of Cheney-Bush for a bit more.
Most of you sound like a bunch of rich, educated/common sense (less) nuts. If someone is at your door threatening your family you would fight. Do you even remember 9/11? That is our door people!
Um, austen73, was Saddam Hussein at your very door? Literally? If so, you really should tell someone.
Duh, Rob what was that? Did you just wake up? Open your door he was there too!