Definition
As adults get older, they are more frequently reminded of their eventual death. Terror Management Theory addresses how people cope with the knowledge of their own mortality and how they react to reminders of it. The theory posits that people cope with awareness of their mortality by sustaining faith in a symbolic conception of reality and one’s personal significance.
Overview
Terror management theory (TMT) was originally formulated by three social psychologists in the mid-1980s based on the writings of Ernest Becker (Greenberg et al. 1986; Solomon et al. 2015). Becker (1971, 1973) synthesized an existential psychodynamic perspective that had developed out of the early psychoanalytic theorizing of Otto Rank and others. The theory posits that although, like other animals, humans are biologically predisposed to continual living, unlike other animals, they are aware that their death is inevitable and could come at any time for a host of reasons. Because it runs counter to core...
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Greenberg, J., Helm, P.J. (2019). Terror Management Theory and Its Implications for Older Adults. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_115-1
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