Summary of the web-based experiment "personality variables and interpersonal attitudes", conducted spring to fall, 2004.

Principal investigator John Schloendorn, University of Tuebingen, Germany at the time

(Today Arizona State University, USA)

Email: Zauberkugel@yahoo.com (preferred)

Phone: 01 480 727 0731

Background:

Terror management theory (TMT) is an experimental psychological paradigm, which holds that humans experience a clash between our inbuilt fear of death, and our unique ability to foresee that death is ultimately inescapable. (Solomon et al. 2000) It seems reasonable to expect that evolution fitted us with a psychological mechanism to manage the permanent existential terror that might result from this insight. According to TMT, this is accomplished by our cultural world views. When we perceive ourselves as a valuable part of a meaningful and lasting cultural world, we may obtain self-esteem that is capable to outshine our existential fears and thereby drive our attention away from our personal impermanence. Elsewhere, I discussed evolutionary aspects of TMT in more detail. (Schloendorn, 2003)

Various predictions of TMT have been testified in a considerable number of experiments. (Greenberg et al. 1997) Anxiety-buffer studies demonstrate that threats to self-esteem engender anxiety (Greenberg et al. 1986), anxiety motivates the defense of self-esteem (Gollwitzer et al. 1982) and that such defense can alleviate anxiety (Mehlman and Snyder, 1987). Mortality-salience studies, on the other hand, demonstrate that reminders of mortality lead test subjects to bolster their culturally established world views. Mortality salience has been demonstrated to increase positive evaluations of those who affirm one’s own cultural world view and negative evaluations of those who threaten it (Rosenblatt et al. 1989), ingroup bias (Harmon-Jones et al. 1996), percieved consensus for one’s own beliefs (Pyszczynski et al. 1996), reluctance to violate cultural norms (Greenberg et al. 1995), and aggression towards those who violate one’s cultural world view (McGregor et al. 1998).

Study aims:

I was interested in evaluating terror management in followers of the new and interesting cultural movement of transhumanism. Transhumanists argue for extensive use of the natural sciences and engineering in order to overcome human limitations, including aging and mortality (Bostrom, 2003). Unlike the modes of coping with, diversion from and denial of human limitations described by terror management theories, the transhumanist approach seems to appreciate the problem and attempt to solve it. Sometimes (Bostrom, 2002), but not always (Perry, 2000), transhumanists include in their visions the possibility of failure and doom, which seems to suggest appreciation of the fragility of the human condition, rather than coping with and denial of the same. This is why I began to suspect that terror management mechanisms might be missing or abnormal in transhumanists.

Design:

In order to recruit transhumanist subjects, who are very scarce and scattered around the globe, I attempted to adapt a standard terror management experiment from the literature to an internet-based setup (Reips, 2003). Once that worked, I was thinking of conducting studies to address the following questions:

-         Are transhumanists terror management deficient?

-         Does mortality salience affect average internet users’ attitudes towards transhumanism?

-         Can exposure to transhumanism (which appreciates the problem of mortality, as a prerequisite to solve it) have similar effects as a mortality salience reminder on average internet users?

Results:

Unfortunately, I was unable to replicate standard terror management experiments from the literature (Rosenblatt, 1989) on the internet, using non-transhumanist internet users as subjects. I am not aware of any terror management experiments on the internet attempted by other investigators. Under some conditions, there seemed to be marginal effects, but they never reached statistical significance. The strongest non-significant effect was obtained when well over 100 non-transhumanist web users were asked to propose a penalty for a satanist (who is regarded as a strong cultural transgressor in many different cultures) for torturing a cat, either with or without a prior mortality reminder.

It is possible that heterogeneity of the test subjects, their cultural attitudes and their environments when taking the test accounted for increased variance as compared to standardized lab experiments. The subject groups reported in reference lab experiments were much more homogenous, often comprising only psychology students from a single cultural background.

Thus, most of the data generated was negative. Insights of academic interest could not be obtained due to inability to produce an effect in the positive control group of average internet users.

However, I did end up with test subjects evaluating the concept of transhumanism with or without various primers that might plausibly have affected (but actually did not affect) their judgement. This rather non-academic, more marketing research-like result was published in the journal of the Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a transhumanist organization with an interest in marketing transhumanist concepts. (Schloendorn, 2005)

I would like to thank my collaborators:

- The Immortality Institute    (hosting the web pages)

- The Social Psychology Network    (recruiting participants)

- The Web experiment List    (recruiting participants)

References:

Bostrom, N “Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards“ Journal of Evolution and Technology, 2002, vol. 9

Bostrom, N Ethical Issues for the 21st Century, ed. Frederick Adams, Philosophical Documentation Center Press, 2003; reprinted in Review of Contemporary Philosophy, 2005, Vol. 4, May. Preprint http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html

Gollwitzer PM, Earle WB and Stephan WG 1982. Affect as a determinant of egotism: Residual excitation and performance attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43: 702-709.

Greenberg J, Simon L, Porteus J, Pyszczynski T, and Solomon S 1995. Evidence of a terror management function of cultural icons: The effects of mortality salience on the inappropriate use of cherished cultural symbols. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21: 1221-1228.

Greenberg J, Solomon S and Pyszczynski T 1997. Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements. Advances in experimental social psychology, 29: 61-139.

Greenberg J, Pyszczynski T and Solomon S 1986. The causes and consequences of the need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In RF Baumeister (Ed.) Public self and private self (pp. 189-212) New York: Springer-Verlag.

Harmon-Jones E et.al. 1997. Terror Management Theory and Self-Esteem: Evidence That Increased Self-Esteem Reduces Mortality Salience Effects Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72(1): 24-36.

Harmon-Jones E, Greenberg J, Solomon S, and Simon, L 1996. The effects of mortality salience on intergroup discrimination between minimal groups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26: 677-681.

Higgins ET 1987. Self-discrepancy: A theory relationg self and affect. Psychological review 94: 319-40.

McGregor HA, Simon L, Arndt J, Greenberg J, and Solomon S 1998 Terror management and aggression: Evidence that mortality salience motivates aggression against worldview threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74: 590-605.

Mehlman RC and Snyder CR 1985. Excuse theory: A test of the self-protective role of attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 994-1001. Perry, M “Forever For All: Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, and the Scientific Prospects for Immortality” Universal Publishers; 1 edition (September 1, 2000)

Pyszczynski T, Wicklund RA, Floresku S, Koch H, Gauch G, Solomon S, and Greenberg J 1996. Whistling in the dark: Exaggerated consensus estimates in response to incidental reminders of mortality. Psychological Science 7: 332-336.

Rosenberg M 1965. Society and the Adolescent Self-Image. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Rosenblatt A, Greenberg J, Solomon S, Pyszczynski T et al. 1989. Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 57: 681-690.

Schloendorn J 2003. Evolution and its implications for aging, death and the extension of the human life span. The World Transhumanist Association, Haldane Paper 2003. Freely available at http://www.transhumanism.org/tv/Haldane2003.htm

Schloendorn J 2005, Negative Data from the Psychological Frontline. Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(1): 107-117

Solomon S, Greenberg J and Pyszczynski T. 2000. Pride and prejudice: Fear of death and social behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science 9(6): 200-204.

Reips, U.-D. (2002). Standards for Internet-based experimenting. Experimental Psychology, 49 (4), 243-256.
 

Reips, U.-D., & Lengler, R. (2005). The Web Experiment List: A Web service for the recruitment of participants and archiving of
Internet-based experiments. Behavior Research Methods, 37, 287-292.

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