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system-justifying motive by performing cognitive work that enables him to view the existing external system as fair, just, and as it should be. By so doing, the person can more easily construe society and its authorities as orderly, consistent, meaningful, and just (Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004).

Jost and colleagues have used SJT to account for much of the same social behavior that TMT seeks to explain, including allegiance to and defense of one’s cultural worldview, the tendency of mortality salience cues to increase such allegiance, and the way Americans reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (e.g., Jost, et al., 2004). From the SJT perspective, behavior that TMT theorists have interpreted as defense of a person’s individualized cultural worldview is viewed as a shift toward justifying the existing (external) social system. We will discuss these divergent interpretations of the TMT and SJT perspectives on ideology and suggest some clarifications of our own analysis of political ideology that were inspired, in part, by questions raised by Jost and colleagues. We will also discuss the relationship between “external” ideologies, people’s interpretations of these ideologies, and how external ideological systems interact with various psychological forces to create individualized cultural worldviews. Because cultural worldviews are complex, multifaceted cognitive constructions, we consider what determines which aspects of one’s worldview people lean on most heavily when their need for protection is aroused. We also explore the possibility that some ideological positions may be better at providing existential comfort than others, and when this is likely to be the case. Finally, the issue of conservative and liberal ideological shifts will be explored from the perspective that emerges out of this analysis.

TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY

Following Ernest Becker, in books such as The Birth and Death of Meaning (1962), The Denial of Death (1973), and Escape from Evil (1975), TMT posits that individuals within a culture assuage the potential angst created by the knowledge of the inevitability of death by creating and subscribing to beliefs about the nature of reality that provide a sense of meaning and value, which in turn provide hope of literal immortality, symbolic immortality, or both. Freud (1961) designated such group-shared beliefs as “illusions,” derived directly from “human wishes” for a desired but unlikely or at best uncertain reality: “we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relation to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification” (p. 40). In other words, because people live in continuous subconscious fear of death, they create shared illusions (e.g., life continues after death) to fulfill the wish that they will not die. Because many beliefs are devised to answer otherwise impen-

etrable “riddles of the universe” (e.g., what happens when we die) that can never be wholly authenticated, they are open to varied interpretations and heated debate. Terror management theory provides an explanation as to why people are motivated to sustain faith in the beliefs and values that they use to protect themselves from existential dread. These beliefs and values serve as protective illusions that are effective in managing fear only when they are held with great confidence, because they cannot be verified in an objective and impartial manner.

Accordingly, TMT posits that people manage the potential terror that results from awareness of the inevitability of death through an anxietybuffering system consisting of an internalized version of the cultural worldview and self-esteem. The individual’s worldview is composed of: (a) a system of beliefs about the nature of reality that provides a sense that the universe is meaningful, orderly, and stable; (b) a set of standards for what is valuable; and (c) provisions for immortality for those who believe in the worldview and live up to its standards. Self-esteem is obtained, and subsequently maintained, by living up to the standards of value that are part of the social roles inhabited by individuals in the context of their cultures, and renders people eligible for safety and security in this life and immortality thereafter. Although cultural worldviews are complex multifaceted cognitive constructions, all elements of worldviews share some common psychological functions. Among the most important of these is to provide meaning and value and, by so doing, bestow psychological equanimity in the face of death.

Worldviews and self-esteem originate in those attachment relationships with one’s parents or primary caregivers that manage distress and ensure that life-sustaining needs are met in early life (for a thorough discussion, see Solomon et al., 1991 or Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Goldenberg, 2003). Mikulincer, Florian, and Hirschberger (2003) reviewed a large body of evidence suggesting that close interpersonal attachments provide protection against death-related fears well into adulthood (see also Cox et al., 2008). Terror management theory specifies that self-esteem is attained by living up to the standards of value of one’s internalized version of the cultural worldview and maintaining the love and approval of others, especially those with whom one has attachment relationships. Thus, the three components of the anxiety-buffering system—worldview, self-esteem, and attachments—work together to manage the potential for anxiety that is inherent in the human condition.

As noted at the outset, all cultural worldviews are ultimately “shared fictions” in the sense that none of them are likely to be literally true. As such, their existence is generally sustained by social consensus, which can only be

maintained when others share these fictions, thus substantiating their veracity (Hardin & Higgins, 1996). Similarly, the sense of personal value or self-esteem that people use for protection is also illusory, in that no objective yardstick exists for assessing the value of a person or his behavior (Festinger, 1954). Indeed, the very idea of all people having value is a cultural construction, one that is not shared by all cultures. And although close interpersonal attachments control distress and increase the chances that our needs will be met, thereby prolonging our lives, they do nothing to change the fact that life is finite and death is inevitable. Thus, all three components of the anxietybuffering system are illusory, in that they help us control our emotional reactions to harsh existential realities, but they in no way change these realities.

Difficulties arise because not all persons or groups share the same fictions. All perceptions of reality are filtered through the lenses of our culture and individual experiences, resulting in widely varying conceptions of the world and the self, which are troubling to a species that depends on certainty of the absolute truth of its own conceptions to control its fears. Consequently, when alternative worldviews or assessments of one’s value are encountered, they are viewed as challenges to the established death-denying belief systems. This is why people are generally uncomfortable around, and are often hostile toward, those who do not share their cherished religious and political values or rosy views of their value as persons.

Over 350 experiments, conducted in 17 countries, provide support for TMT’s central proposition that cultural worldviews and self-esteem function to buffer the potential for anxiety created by knowledge of the inevitability of death (for recent reviews, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Arndt, 2007; Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). For example, empirical studies have shown that reminders of death (mortality salience) increase adherence to and defense of one’s worldview. In some of the earliest mortality salience studies, Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, and Lyon (1989) found that reminders of death increased punitive reactions to moral transgressors, and Greenberg and colleagues (1990) demonstrated that mortality salience led Christians to evaluate other Christians more positively while evaluating Jewish people more negatively. Terror management theory research has also shown that mortality salience consistently instigates self-esteem enhancement and increases ego-defensive behavior (e.g., Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Chatel, 1992; Heine, Harihara, & Niiya, 2002; Taubman Ben-Ari, Florian, & Mikulincer, 1999). Further, TMT research has shown that bolstering faith in one’s cultural worldview or increasing self-esteem reduces one’s susceptibility to anxiety and anxiety-related behavior (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1993; Greenberg et al., 1992), attenuates the effects of death reminders on worldview defense and self-esteem striving, and diminishes the ac-

cessibility of death-related thoughts (e.g., Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Simon, 1997; Greenberg, Arndt, Schimel, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2001). In contrast, threatening one’s self-esteem or cultural worldview increases the accessibility of death-related thoughts (e.g., Mikulincer & Florian, 2002; Schimel, Hayes, Williams, & Jahrig, 2007). These effects of death reminders have been obtained in a wide variety of cultures, both Western and non-Western. Of particular relevance to current global conflicts, Abdollahi (2004) has replicated the effects of mortality salience on evaluations of moral transgressors, charitable giving, and self-esteem striving among Shiite Muslims in Iran.

SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION THEORY

System justification theory posits that, because people depend heavily on their social system for meaning, stability, and security, they are motivated to support and perpetuate the system as it stands. To explain why people are driven to justify the existing social system under which they live, SJT theorists cite such factors as “preferences for cognitive consistency, uncertainty reduction, conservation of effort and of prior beliefs, fear of equality, belief in a just world, and the need to reduce dissonance associated with inaction” (Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004, p. 267), as well as the need to reduce anxiety, guilt, negative affect, and cognitive-emotional dissonance (Jost & Hunyady, 2002, 2005). Whereas the first set of motivators share the common theme of an epistemic need for structure, the latter set entail coping with the emotional consequences of threats of various sorts—that is, the “palliative function” of system justification. Jost and colleagues also discuss dispositional factors (cognitive needs for order, structure, and closure, openness to experience, and intolerance for ambiguity) and situational factors (system threat and MS) that affect tendencies to engage in system-justifying behavior (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003a; Jost & Hunyady, 2005). From the perspective of SJT, a broad range of diverse epistemological and existential threats are all posited to motivate people to view the external system in which they live and work as fair and just.

Many psychological theories, especially those that emphasize the need for self-esteem, lead to the prediction that those who benefit from a system would be motivated to justify that system, because this portrays them as deserving their good fortune and thus boosts their self-esteem. A unique claim made by SJT is that people will be motivated to rationalize the existing system regardless of whether it is in the best interest of the individual or the group to do so (see also Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). Consistent with this view, Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, and Sullivan (2003) report

system-justifying behavior among several American minority and low-status groups in the form of endorsement for meritocratic systems and economic inequality (see also Henry & Saul, 2006, for a conceptual replication). Evidence that low-status groups often show a bias toward outgroups over their own ingroup on explicit and especially implicit measures is also taken as evidence of a system-justifying motive (for a review, see Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). Indeed, Jost, Fitzsimmons, & Kay (2004, p. 267) stated that “according to the most extreme form of system justification hypothesis . . . people who are most disadvantaged by a given social system should paradoxically be the most likely to provide ideological support for it, insofar as they have the greatest need to justify their suffering.” However, the more typical finding that members of low-status groups simply display less ingroup favoritism, more attitudinal ambivalence concerning the ingroup, and more outgroup favoritism than do members of high-status groups (Jost & Burgess, 2000; Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002) seems at odds with this extreme form of the theory. This more common finding might reflect the operation of competing selfand group-enhancing motives, which are acknowledged as additional influences by SJT.

COMPARING SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION AND TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORIES

It appears then that SJT and TMT attempt to explain similar behavioral outcomes (i.e., the support and defense of an existing system or the support and defense of a cultural worldview), albeit from different theoretical foundations. System justification theory views such behavior as aimed at justifying an existing system that is in some ways external to the individual, in order to meet a variety of epistemic and existential needs related to consistency, certainty, justice, structure, and reassurance. Terror management theory views such behavior as aimed at shoring up elements of the person’s internalized cultural worldview that gives life meaning and oneself value, in order to quell death-related anxiety in particular. Although the two perspectives are generally compatible, they differ regarding the source of the threats that motivate the fortification of a psychological structure. Whereas SJT emphasizes epistemic needs for certainty, structure, and justice—along with conservation of cognitive effort—and the existential reduction of guilt, anxiety, and dissonance as motivating system-justifying behavior, TMT is focused on the death-denying aspects of these and other psychological motives (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997) and argues that people cling to conceptions of the world and themselves that protect them from the fear of

death. Thus, the two theories ask somewhat different questions at different levels of abstraction, with TMT focused on why people need the psychological entities that are posited by SJT: that is, viewing the current system as just and legitimate.

In accordance with SJT, a number of other theorists and researchers have argued that it is not death per se that people are motivated to defend against, but rather uncertainty, which is viewed as the most threatening aspect of death and thus responsible for instigating defensive responses to thoughts of death (McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001; van den Bos & Miedema, 2001). We agree that uncertainty can be unsettling and can motivate defensive behavior. However, the purpose of TMT is to explain why people need certainty, consistency, structure, justice, order, selfesteem, and related social psychological outcomes. Terror management theory posits that people need stable, certain, well-structured conceptions of the world and themselves because their worldviews and self-concepts function to protect them from death anxiety. These entities are most effective in providing this protection when they themselves are stable, certain, are well-structured. Although we agree that there are other reasons why people seek certainty and structure, such as the need for clear guides for action (cf., Becker, 1962) emphasized by epistemologically rooted approaches (e.g., Kruglanski, 1989), TMT suggests that the links between confidence in one’s worldview, self-esteem, interpersonal attachments, and protection from existential fear give the need for structure much of its driven and sometimes irrational quality.

From the perspective of TMT, death is frightening and motivating because it is the most certain of all life events, it entails the end of physical life (which people are strongly motivated to preserve), and people are keenly aware of the possibility that death may entail the end of their existence and thus the frustration of all other goals and motives. People are protected from this fear by maintaining subjective certainty regarding the absolute validity of a worldview that gives life meaning, value, and permanence. Indeed, although some studies have shown that reminders of uncertainty produce effects similar to mortality salience (e.g., McGregor et al., 2001; van den Bos & Miedena, 2000), many others have shown that reminders of death exert different effects than do reminders of uncertainty and many other potential threats (for a review, see Greenberg, Solomon, & Arndt, 2007). Uncertainty about the defensive beliefs and values that protect people from mortality concerns is threatening because it undermines the protection that they provide. Recent research has shown that inductions that undermine certainty in one’s worldview can indeed increase the accessibility of death-related thoughts (e.g., Schimel et al., 2007).

EXTERNAL REALITY AND INTERNALIZED

CULTURAL WORLDVIEWS

One of the most important differences between the TMT and SJT perspectives on ideology lies in where the psychologically active element of ideology resides: is it internal or external to the person? System justification theory posits that people are motivated to maintain and justify the external social system because this system provides meaning and order to their lives. Terror management theory views people as motivated to maintain their own unique individualized versions of the cultural worldview.

In most previous writings, we have used the general term cultural worldview to refer to both the individual’s internalized set of values and the norms and values that exist outside of the individual in the cultural milieu. We did this to emphasize the dependence of the individual’s internal experience and concepts on the external culture within which he resides. However, from early on (Greenberg et al., 1986; Solomon et al., 1991), we have maintained that each person abstracts his own individualized worldview out of the many distinct worldview elements that he encounters from the external culture throughout life. The process of abstracting an individualized worldview from these diverse influences involves an integration of new information and experiences with existing internalized cognitive structures. This integration process is especially constricted and biased toward one’s existing worldview and those of others who are depended on for protection when the individual is in a state of high vulnerability, threat, or anxiety (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Goldenberg, 2003), as children are in their early years and many people continue to be throughout their lives. Thus, although people have the potential to craft their own worldviews by integrating their diverse experiences, the extent to which they are able to do this in a creative and self-determined manner depends on how well they are protected from anxiety by their attachments, existing worldview, and self-esteem.

According to SJT, social systems are meant to refer to “the actual objective, structural features of the family, government, [and] economy” (Jost, personal communication, 2007). It strikes us as problematic, though, to posit that people respond directly to objective aspects of an external social structure. Because social systems are complex, often ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory, individuals within a given culture interpret and interact with the external, objective system in different ways. Thus, the psychologically active component of any external system is necessarily an individualized interpretation. For example, people understand the meanings of democracy, communism, Christianity, and Islam in diverse ways, and the many

controversies regarding the “true meanings and values” of those institutions illustrate this inherent subjectivity.

This subjectivity is magnified by differences in people’s approaches to what should be done with the original intentions of the founders of these ideologies. Further subjectivity is added by the fact that, in today’s complex, multicultural world, people’s beliefs and values, either intentionally or not, reflect a unique, individualized combination of ideas from a multitude of diverse sources. Should the original meanings be preserved as faithfully as possible, as fundamentalists would have it, or should they be adapted to the exigencies of the current time and place? Although some attempt to stay as true as possible to the original intentions of their ideological founders, others favor combining influences from diverse systems of thought to create new hybrid ideologies that they believe are better suited to contemporary realities. This latter tendency is probably especially true of those living in individualistic cultures or those who have internalized individualistic values, as opposed to collectivistic ones that tend to be, but are not always, more respectful of tradition (an example of the variation in the process we are discussing). Indeed, for many (especially political liberals), the “American Way” entails the creative construction of one’s own worldview, and in some cases even involves the eschewal of any attempt to explicitly mirror the diverse cultural sources from which it is drawn.

For these reasons, we think it important to focus on the individual’s own unique interpretation of the external social system. Terror management theory posits that individuals abstract diverse elements of their interpretations of worldviews to create their own individualized versions of these external influences, which vary in their fidelity to the original external sources and which are the psychologically active structures that protect them against existential fear. Indeed, the first published set of TMT studies (Rosenblatt et al., 1989) examined the question of whether reminders of death led people to defend broadly accepted cultural values or only those values to which they personally ascribe, and showed that mortality salience led to harsher judgments of prostitutes only among those who viewed prostitution as immoral—despite the fact that it is illegal in this country and construed as immoral both within mainstream American culture and by most Americans. Given the diversity of sources that people draw on to create their worldviews, and the diverse interpretations of these sources that form the raw materials for these creations, it is apparent that the individualized worldviews that provide psychological equanimity are complex and multifaceted cognitive structures that vary considerably within a social or cultural system.

It is also important to recognize that the relation between external cultural systems and internalized cultural worldviews is not unidirectional in

nature. Inherent in the conceptualization of an individualized worldview is the operation of a feedback process by which the external culture and the individual interact. The external culture contains a broad and diverse array of elements and ideals that serve as raw material for the individual worldview. The individual selects from his interpretations of those bits of raw material to create and internalize an individualized worldview, which becomes the psychological anxiety buffer that protects him from the potential for existential anxiety. Because people require consensual validation in order for their worldviews to provide the certainty that enables these beliefs and values to adequately protect them from their fears, these individualized worldviews rarely deviate too far from those held by a significant number of people in the individual’s social environment. Thus, we agree with SJT that external social reality exerts a powerful effect on the individual (see also Jost, Ledgerwood, & Hardin, 2008). However, given the complex, diverse, and stratified nature of large-scale modern societies, it is typically possible to find reference groups that will provide at least some degree of validation for many diverse sets of beliefs and values. When these worldviews are effective in controlling anxiety, and contain elements that are appealing to others, these once deviant ideas can slowly (and sometimes rapidly) be absorbed into the mainstream culture and become a source of ideas for other people to adopt as bases for meaning, value, and ultimately security, a process referred to as accommodation in previous TMT writings (Greenberg et al., 1986). Thus, although individualized worldviews build on the ideas and values of diverse mainstream cultures, subcultural elements sometimes find their way into the mainstream, leading to a constantly evolving source of mainstream beliefs and values.

The Contents of Worldviews and Systems

Another important distinction between TMT and SJT is the breadth or specificity of what is referred to by the worldview or system concepts. Both concepts are rather broad and diffuse, with “fuzzy boundaries.” It appears, however, that the worldview concept is considerably broader and its functional components are perhaps more clearly specified. The individual’s cultural worldview refers to the sum total of the person’s “theory of reality,” including an explanation for how the world works that provides answers to basic cosmological questions, a set of standards of value that specify what is good and bad or right and wrong, and the assumption that one will be protected from death in either a literal or symbolic way if one’s worldview is correct and one lives according to the dictates of its standards. Thus, although not all elements of a person’s worldview are equally important for providing protection from death-related anxiety, the TMT conception of the

worldview encompasses beliefs and values about things as mundane as cuisine and table manners, as pervasive as basic morality, and as elusive as life after death. In contrast, the SJT concept of system has a more specific content focus, referring to objective cultural, social, economic, religious, or legislative structures that pertain to the social structure and norms and practices of one’s society. System justification theory emphasizes the concept of the status quo, a Latin term literally translated as the “state in which” and more commonly understood as the existing state of affairs within a particular social system. As such, the system represented by the status quo will likely correspond to a portion of the available collective worldviews from which a person can build his individualized worldviews. An important challenge for TMT is to more precisely characterize the determinants of which worldview elements are most influential in providing protection from anxiety, an issue that will be addressed later in this chapter.

Although terror management theorists have yet to create a complete list of the concrete contents that make up the collective or individual cultural worldview, many of the key elements are clear. Research in anthropology and cross-cultural psychology shows that all cultural worldviews include creation myths, values regarding what is good and bad, roles and rules that allow its members to acquire and sustain a sense of self-worth, and beliefs about death which include literal and/or symbolic modes of transcending one’s death (cf., Greenberg et al., 1986). Recent TMT research reveals that worldviews also include perceived consistencies within and between individuals; stereotypes; beliefs in a just world; orderly, consensually validated conceptions of time; and connections between one’s past and present self (e.g., Greenberg et al., in press; Landau et al., 2004). In addition, we know from studies focusing on derogation or aggression that mortality salience provokes derision of people unlike oneself—people with different religious affiliations, people with unconventional beliefs regarding morality, people from other nations, and people with dissimilar political ideologies. From this, we can infer that nationalism, religion, political ideology, and morality are important components of cultural worldviews.

WHERE IS SECURITY TO BE FOUND?

A particularly important question that arises out of TMT’s growing body of research is whether people are more likely to respond to pressing existential threats by seeking security in the worldviews that they have chronically used to provide security or, instead, by moving toward particular types of worldviews that seem especially comforting. This issue was first raised by Wicklund (1997), when he asked whether people are more likely to respond to the