THE NEXT GENERATION

The Ernest Becker Foundation had the opportunity to sponsor Travel Awards for graduate psychology students at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s (SPSP) annual conference. The awardees were chosen on the basis of recognition of excellence in existential psychology research and scholarship, as well as with the goal of promoting inclusion and accessibility. Here are some interviews from previous years’ conference winners, discussing why these ideas matter

When did you discover Becker and the field of existential psychology/TMT, and what impact did this have on your life?

I discovered TMT in my Social Psychology course while pursuing my undergraduate degree. I found the topic interesting because death is such a prevalent fear in people’s lives and so many people attempt to prevent death and pretend that death is not a concern for them. From there I looked more into the subject and discovered Becker and existential psychology. Having experienced the deaths of multiple people close to me, I have found it helpful to understand people’s feelings on death from a psychological perspective. Additionally, the new ideas have been crucial in my choosing to advance my academic career and to conduct research in the area of existential psychology.

Has your research changed your view on death in any way?

I wouldn’t say that my research has changed my view on death. I have always had an open relationship with death. I have always understood that everyone dies and that it is something that should be talked about.

Are you religious? If so, has this played a role in the way you approach your research?

I am not religious, though I find religious belief to be an interesting and important area is existential psychology. Religion is one of the reasons I chose to study existential psychology. Almost all societies throughout the world have a prevalent religion, I have always wondered why that is. Need for belonging and meaning and life after death seem to be likely reasons for religion.

Can you tell us briefly what your research is looking at right now, and where you hope to go with it in the future?

Presently my research consists of three topics: death, religion, and the psychology of human reproduction, particularly anti-natalism (the belief that it is morally wrong to have children). Additionally, my research topics frequently overlap, recently I have conducted studies on death and religion and death and anti-natalism. In the future I hope to continue to expand this research area. For example, I want to further the study of atheists and to further examine to what extent people contemplate reproduction before reproducing and what factors people take into account when deciding to have a child or not.

Anything else you would like us to know?

Thank you for the opportunity to present my research!

When did you discover Becker and the field of existential psychology/TMT?

I watched Woody Allen’s Annie Hall which mentioned Becker’s Denial of Death. I thought that was an interesting title for a book but I did not explore it much further at that time. I then came across TMT around 2014 when I took my first social psychology class. I had always thought TMT was such an interesting theory. When I began to contemplate the kind of research I would like to do, my interest in existentialism was at the forefront of my mind, and the largest area of empirical existential psychology research at the time happened to be around the issue of death via TMT research. That’s when I started to connect all the dots and began reading deeper into TMT and Becker’s ideas.

What impact did these new ideas have on your life, both academic and/or personal?

It seemed to me intuitive that awareness of mortality should affect how we live our lives. Ever since I was a child, I feel like I’ve lived in the kind of “ontological” mode of being that Heidegger endorsed: constantly keeping the inevitability of my own death at the forefront of my mind, and trying to live authentically in light of that fact. I also had a near-death experience as an adult in which I nearly died in a car accident; funnily enough, I remember thinking this would not change much how I live life because I had already indoctrinated myself into constantly remembering death, and I also remember feeling somewhat vindicated in my lifelong pronouncements to others regarding the precarious nature of our existences.

Then, when I came across Becker’s ideas and TMT, I discovered a way I could study these interesting ideas as part of my career, hence why I changed my career and am on my current academic path. In terms of my personal life, I felt that Becker and TMT helped validate my everyday frustration regarding the more unsavory aspects of human nature and how people can do some pretty evil things in order the transcend the apparent meaningless of their lives. It was nice to know that I wasn’t crazy and there were others out there thinking similar ideas (or at least others out there who were as crazy as me!).

What are your personal experiences with death?

As mentioned, I had a pretty serious car accident in which I nearly died. This may have been critical to my shift from studying philosophy to psychology. That experience helped me realize that it is the concrete experiences of love and beauty that can give one a sense of meaning in the face of terrible suffering, at least more so than the abstract reasonings of philosophy—meaning for me wasn’t to be found in writing a 100,000 word dissertation about hair-splitting distinctions, but in my concrete and emotion-laden memories of my mother and my powerful wish to leave the hospital so I could see her again someday. Hence my change from philosophy to psychology perhaps…

Has your research changed your view on death in any way?

It has, to some degree. My master’s research included asking undergraduate research participants to think and write about death every day for 14 consecutive days. I had hoped that it might be possible to merely think about death repeatedly in order to gain the potentially positive and transformative effects of death-related experiences, such as increased gratitude and appreciation and meaning in life. However, my results have made me somewhat doubt the possibility of achieving wide-ranging change among undergraduate populations via death contemplation. Perhaps only a small subset of people can benefit from death contemplation, or perhaps we really do need to have concrete death-related experiences in order to experience transformation.

Are you religious? If so, has this played a role in the way you approach your research?

I would say I’m spiritual, but not religious. I am “spiritual” in the sense that I value deep, emotional meaning, feel a strong sense of connectedness to all things and beings, and believe that many spiritual and religious traditions triangulate on some powerful truths about the human condition and how we should live.

Can you tell us briefly what your research is looking at right now, and where you hope to go with it in the future?

Broadly, my current research program focuses on the nascent but growing intersection of clinical psychology and existential social psychology. I would like to take the empirical approach that social psychology has used to study existential issues and apply this within the context of clinical psychology. By the end of my graduate program, I would like to be a scholar in empirically-based existential psychotherapies.

Anything else you would like us to know?

I couldn’t have gone to this conference if it wasn’t for the support of this diversity travel award, so thank you very much! I greatly appreciate your support. It was a wonderful experience speaking with leading existential psychologists and making connections with other graduate students who are interested in the same research as me. In fact, I met a few graduate students studying to be a therapist like me, who are also interested in empirically studying existential ideas in therapy—I thought I was the only before this conference! Cheers!

When did you discover Becker and the field of existential psychology/TMT?

I was first exposed to work on existential psychology and terror management theory in my undergraduate Intro to Social Psych class. However, I really delved into the existential psych literature when preparing for my dissertation proposal defense. I had an effect that I was trying to explain, and it seemed like the mechanism might be something akin to the processes proposed by Terror Management Theory and related theories like Compensatory Control and the Meaning Maintenance Model. I repeatedly found that people attributed harmful events to human intervention, and it seemed like this effect might be driven by people’s attempts to make sense of uncertain events by locating a sort of “ultimate” agent or cause of the event.

What impact did these new ideas have on your life, both academic and/or personal?

I found the hydraulic nature of these theories fascinating—the idea that experiencing a need or lack of structure in one area of one’s life could lead a person to shore up other, seemingly unrelated, beliefs or practices. Most of my work focuses on intergroup hierarchies and system maintenance motives, but learning more about existential psychology helped provide some context and grounding for my other work because so many of these processes are fundamental to how we understand and react to the world around us.

What are your personal experiences with death?

I’ve been fortunate enough to not have lost too many close family members or friends over the course of my life. The closest people to me who have died are my grandparents, most of whom lived very long, full lives. Three of my grandparents passed away while I was in graduate school, and this really made me reflect upon the desire of many people to create some kind of enduring legacy, which types of people have been able to leave “durable” legacies throughout history, and what we as a society deem worthy of recognizing as a legacy.

Has your research changed your view on death in any way?

It probably has, particularly by putting our reactions to death into the broader context of our constant attempts to make sense of the world around us. It has also made me reflect on why the idea of leaving a legacy and being remembered after one’s death is such a strong desire for many people.

Are you religious? If so, has this played a role in the way you approach your research?

I was raised in a Christian household. I think the main way that this may influence the way that I approach my research is by giving me insight into how and why religion may lead people to respond to situations in certain ways—a view that is often more nuanced than the other explanations and speculations I sometimes hear in my classes and academic discussions.

Can you tell us briefly what your research is looking at right now, and where you hope to go with it in the future?

As mentioned above, my dissertation focuses on people’s attributions for negative events. I find that the more harmful people perceive an event (e.g., a natural disaster) to be, the more likely they are to attribute that event to human action. I believe that this effect is driven by a desire to locate the intent or responsibility behind harmful occurrences – a mechanism that I am continuing to investigate. I’m also exploring how this “think harm, think humans” heuristic might be employed for things like boosting the belief in human-made climate change.

When did you discover Becker and the field of existential psychology/TMT?

At the age of 18, I discovered The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus which was my introduction to Existentialism. At the same time, I was taking psychology courses at my college and I found myself interested in topics related to social psychology. I was reading and constantly exploring new materials related to social psychology and existential philosophy and I stumbled upon the movie Flight From Death. This was my introduction to the ideas of Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory. At the time when I discovered the movie I was trying to understand why people hold religious and ideological beliefs and how people find meaning in life, and the ideas of Becker and TMT went a long way in helping me find answers to these questions.

What impact did these new ideas have on your life, both academic and/or personal?

Academically, it made social psychology research more interesting. I was very happy to see that broad existential topics could indeed be studied scientifically, and it has a place in social psychology research which is what I am interested in the most. At a personal level, I have learned the importance of integrating death awareness in my own life which goes a long way in informing choices that I have made. Because I am aware of the inevitability of my death and my also because of my lack of belief in an afterlife it has led me to think about the questions about meaning deeply. Hence, I strive to find meaningful work and cultivate relationships that are meaningful.

Has your research changed your view on death in any way?

It has highlighted the extent to which existential issues have an impact on our lives. One common retort to the type of research that we engage in has been that such issues do not have any practical significance. However, research shows that this not the case. The existential issues that we study have immense potential to inform us about how people deal with issues related to death, freedom, isolation, identity and meaning (the big five existential concerns) through work, art, personal relationships, building communities, seeking social change and participating in activism, etc.

Can you tell us briefly what your research is looking at right now, and where you hope to go with it in the future?

Currently, my research is looking at how religious and atheists might manage and regulate their belief systems under conditions where they are made aware of their mortality. Another research project is aimed at exploring how people in eastern and non-Abrahamic cultures might manage their death awareness, specifically looking at those who hold Hindu religious beliefs in India.

When did you discover Becker and the field of existential psychology/TMT?

I first learned about Becker in a personality course I took late in my undergrad at Acadia University. The existential perspective immediately resonated with me. From a young age, I have been concerned with big existential questions. I spent a lot of mental energy thinking about death and I often struggled to understand what the point of life is. I found it fascinating to find out that a lot of our thoughts, attitudes, and behavior can be attributed to our awareness of death, and it was somewhat relieving to know that I wasn’t the only one who spent time thinking about it. I reached out to the professor, Joe Hayes, to become involved as a research assistant with him. He lent me The Denial of Death, and long story short, I became pretty immersed in Becker’s ideas and TMT. Since then, Joe and I have been working on multiple TMT-related projects together.

What impact did these new ideas have on your life, both academic and/or personal?

Becker’s ideas had a large, positive impact on my life. Because I became more knowledgeable about the reasons why people do the things they do, I became more observant of the people around me and more self-aware of my behavior as well. I feel that this has enhanced my ability to connect with others in a genuine way. Furthermore, Becker and TMT’s ideas are really what triggered my interest in doing social/personality psychology research, and they played a significant role in launching my research career, which I’m extremely grateful for.

Has your research changed your view on death in any way?

My research has not necessarily changed my view on death, but it has changed my view on life. You can buffer the anxiety that arises from the concept of death, but more importantly for me, you can buffer the depression that can arise. As I said in my first answer, I have often struggled to understand what the point of life is given that death is inevitable. I’ve gradually learned ways to foster purpose in life, and have gradually become more engaged in life.

Can you tell us briefly what your research is looking at right now, and where you hope to go with it in the future?

Right now, I’m working on a program of research (with Joe Hayes) aimed at measuring the construct desire for life—how much one values their life and wants to continue living. Life follows the same rules as any other goal, including the fact that motivation towards the goal can wax and wane depending on the circumstances. When motivation to live fades, dangerous consequences ensue (for the individual and society), and it is incredibly important to study the conditions under which it does. Developing a way to detect variation in desire for life will help us discover ways to prevent or counteract decreases in the desire to live. Furthermore, assessing desire for life could reveal interesting nuances in how people respond when death is salient, such as differences in how afraid one is to die, and thus, how much people engage zealous modes of defense (i.e., championing cultural worldviews, striving for self-esteem).

Anything else you would like us to know?

Thank you so much for the EBF Award. It helped support my conference travel, and it’s an honor to be recognized by such a great organization.

When did you discover Becker and the field of existential psychology/TMT?

I discovered Becker and existentialism when I pursued my undergraduate philosophy degree. I focused my undergraduate capstone on German Ideology and Existentialism with a specific interest in Hegel’s Phenomenology. In my master’s program I discovered existential psychology and decided to change my career toward research.

What impact did these new ideas have on your life, both academic and/or personal?

My confrontations with mortality during my service in the military brought a deeper understanding of concepts discussed in Becker’s The Birth and Death of Meaning. After having children, I can see the existential motivations underlying their behavior.

What are your personal experiences with death?

Military service—combat.

Has your research changed your view on death in any way?

I think existential rumination is a healthy way to cope as I grow older and approach death.

Are you religious? If so, has this played a role in the way you approach your research?

I was raised in the Catholic Church, however I am not currently practicing any religion.

Can you tell us briefly what your research is looking at right now, and where you hope to go with it in the future?

I am currently exploring distal defense mechanisms of TMT among military combat veterans, as well as existential isolation among mothers – particularly as both these topics are related to health outcomes. I hope to find practical interventions from an existential perspective that will help prevent or deter negative or risky behaviors (eg. hazardous drinking) that are primed by death awareness or another existential crisis.

Anything else you would like us to know?

Thank you all for such providing support for those interested in this research to present our ideas and findings.

How did you become interested in Becker and TMT?

I had my first psychology course in high school, and I became very interested in understanding human thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. When I started college, I continued to study psychology. At the same time, I was also enrolled in world religions and cultural diversity courses. What I found interesting was that, despite so much diversity in beliefs, people adamantly hold onto their beliefs and defend them with conviction. I was fascinated by psychology and culture, so when I learned about TMT while applying to graduate school, I was very intrigued. I applied to work with Dr. Vail in order to further explore TMT. The summer before my first semester, I asked him for some recommended readings. He recommended Becker’s The Denial of Death and The Birth and Death of Meaning. While reading those books, I think I had a very similar experience as many others – I immediately became fascinated with his portrayal of human behavior and the potential underlying motivation for much of what we do in life. I enjoy TMT because it allows us to test these ideas empirically. So, after first reading Becker’s work and exploring the TMT literature, it has been history ever since, and I have been using this framework to explore my own interests.

What impact has this research had on you both personally and academically?

Interestingly, I have had family members pass away over the last couple of years while I have been studying TMT. So, in addition to researching the impact of mortality concerns, I have experienced reminders of death in my own life. This has prompted me to connect the literature to my life and vice versa. In particular, I am interested in using the perspectives of Becker and TMT to explore ways in which death can perhaps motivate people to be less defensive. Maybe people can take the awareness of mortality as an opportunity to reflect on life with more appreciation, finding ways to be creative and to explore, as well as seeking meaningful social connections.

So in other words, seeing when mortality reminders can lead to prosocial behavior?

Yes. Many people are unaware of the more positive applications of TMT, and I think this is a fruitful and meaningful direction for research. For instance, in two recent studies, our lab found that for people relatively more oriented toward extrinsic goals—that is, culturally-prescribed values such as wealth and fame—death reminders had the anticipated effect: people reported lower satisfaction with life and a decreased motivation to explore novel intellectual and social settings. But for people who were relatively more oriented toward intrinsic goals—such as social connections and personal growth—mortality reminders actually led to increased satisfaction with life and increased motivation to explore novel settings. These findings suggest that when people are more oriented towards inherently-satisfying values, death might not be as much of an existential stressor, but perhaps an opportunity to reflect and appreciate life. I am excited to be on the verge of this emerging research, and I look forward to exploring these directions in the future.

When did you first learn about Becker and TMT?

When I started undergrad I was really aware of how death is impending, and I really wanted to make sure I lived a value-based life that was meaningful to me. I learned about TMT because I took a social psychology class, and it happened to be with Jamie Arndt; it was such a coincidence to find TMT and Becker at that time. I ended up working in Jamie’s research lab for three years, and during my first year doing that I was also becoming really interested in trauma. I was struggling to integrate this passion for social psychology with what I felt like was a clinical focus, and that’s when Jamie introduced me to anxiety-buffer disruption theory. I started incorporating that into my research, which eventually led me to my current program in Colorado.

What projects have you been working on in graduate school?

My research here has been focused on trying to clarify the mechanisms of anxiety-buffer disruption, using actual data to clarify the theoretical underpinnings. I have also been very interested in the symbolic meaning of the body, and how interacting with the body as an object might impede people’s social and emotional functioning. Becker and others talk about how the self is relational; we understand ourselves through interactions with others and society. Since we live in a society where, particularly for women, sexualization and the physical appearance of the body are emphasized over personality and internal traits, this might lead to existential concerns. Extreme focus on the body deemphasizes all the other aspects of the self; one’s symbolic self and true intimacy are lost, and this can undermine people’s ability to connect with others.

Have you seen Becker’s ideas manifest in your research on trauma?

According to Becker, the transitioning of your self-concept from being biological to symbolic is fully mediated by the parent or the authority figures; it’s through parental redirection that children learn to gain symbolic self-worth. So right there you can stop and think, well what happens when your parents are abusive? What does that mean? Experiences of abuse can fundamentally change your sense of self, so children in those situations might be internalizing values that are trauma-based. And for all ages, trauma can also lead to an increased view of the body as an object. Treatment involves rebuilding that sense of self by finding new values that challenge or reshape the old ones, which can be challenging to say the least. In The Birth and Death of Meaning, Becker says that practitioners should think about how every client is the hero of their own story, and ask what’s stopping the client from being that hero. That conceptualization has been very helpful in thinking of my own clients and how their trauma might have impacted their sense of self-worth, in addition to what that means for them to potentially heal from their trauma and have better well-being in life.

Lastly, have these ideas impacted your personal sense of self?

Absolutely. It really opens your eyes in a way that I feel like you can’t walk away from. Death is always lurking in our subconscious, impacting our behaviors. It has made me be more understanding of myself, and more accepting of other people as well. It’s probably to the point where I get annoying, because I’m constantly saying, “It must be death anxiety” [laughs]. Empathy is increased when we understand that everyone is just trying to deal with this unfathomable threat. And everyone just wants to feel good in their life.

What made you decide to study social psychology?

For a long time I have been interested in what people do with threatening information. And I have always been interested in existential topics (philosophy, literature, etc.), so by that avenue I stumbled upon Becker’s work. I read The Denial of Death, and then I read Escape from Evil, and Birth and Death of Meaning, and I was hooked. I could really see myself developing these ideas further.

From there I found out about TMT and became interested in psychology. In undergrad I did some work with Brian Burke, who was doing terror management work at Fort Lewis college, and my interest just kept growing and growing. I applied to social psychology Ph.D. programs with TMT as the focus, and am now working with Jamie Arndt at the University of Missouri.

What sort of research projects have you been doing in grad school?

Jamie Arndt co-developed the Terror Management Health Model, so we do a lot of health-related projects. We are talking about a new project looking at perceptions of risk with cancer, and we just finished up a chapter on the connection between religion and health from an existential perspective. I’m planning to write a review paper on health policy decisions from an existential standpoint, which follows from a project we’re finishing up showing that existential threats can reduce support for equitable health policies. We are also doing a few projects about threat in general, such as how people react to the threat of social change. And then I have also worked on a few projects related to indigenous communities, particularly the Cherokee nation. On my dad’s side we’re part of a small Native American tribe in New Mexico called Nambé, so that has some personal interest for me.

Can you tell me more about your research with Native Americans?

My research about Native populations is not as directly related to TMT or Becker, but there are some parallels to be drawn. I was recently working on a project evaluating a cultural intervention with Cherokee kids. There is some research showing that native people who are more encultured – those who have more cultural knowledge, take part in more cultural events – have better health outcomes than those who don’t. So there is this program that tries to increase enculturation for Cherokee kids, teaching them about history, culture, language, things like this. And it has been shown to have a lot of well-being outcomes. So I helped evaluate that with another person at the University of Missouri who is working at the med school. So that is what I have done so far on that, and I’m sure I’ll be continuing. This connection between increased cultural exposure and positive well-being is really interesting, and I would imagine there is something existential in nature at play.

When did you first come across Becker’s work?

In my first couple years of undergrad I got really into self-help. I was doing a lot of reading on self-development and that sort of thing. Eventually that got a little old and I was more interested in the nuts and bolts of how things work, so I started reading some of the more popular psych books, with authors like David Eagleman and Daniel Kahneman. It was around that time that I read Denial of Death—I think I saw it somewhere, or someone recommended it to me. Before reading it, I was broadly interested in threats—why people are defensive, why people are resistant to change, to novel ideas, to novel ways of seeing the world and behaving, etc. Because I was already interested in those questions, when I read Denial of Death I found it especially intriguing.

How did Becker affect you, both personally and academically?

Becker got me thinking a lot about death and subsequently got me interested into the social psych literature, like terror management theory, and also the broader threat and defense literature. I was interested in how goals, motivation, and practical day-to-day concerns are related to ideology. I was also becoming more interested in things like religion and interpersonal dynamics. I was curious as to how self-regulation is influenced by a broader, social-religious context, and how threat and defense play out within that.

A key insight for me from Denial of Death is that often, the major reason we feel threatened by things in our lives is not because of the actual threat! When we’re confronted by different things, it brings up a lot of deep-seeded stuff in us almost immediately, such as tapping into people’s immortality projects and heroism.

What inspired your current research about people’s interest in unique truths (e.g., specialized knowledge, spiritual insights, conspiracy theories)?

A lot of it is inspired by Nietzsche, who commented that philosophers and scientists would just toil away, spending hours and hours locked up and neglecting the world in order to try to grab on to this enduring, forever, legacy-type truth, “If only I can make that discovery” or “If only I can understand how this or that works.” Usually that wasn’t simply to help the world, but to attach themselves to some sort of immortal legacy, or to something that’s concrete, platonic, that’s ever-present, above this world and never going to be touched by it. So that got me interested into people wanting to attain special knowledge, like people who spend years or hours poring over books trying to figure out what really happened in the JFK assassination, just so they can feel that they have something above other people. It’s a way to gain self-esteem or to feel like one has occupied a special place in the universe, where you understand something that other people don’t and you’re the bearer of this profound truth. It’s a very convenient way to feel above others without having to produce or provide the world anything of substance.

In the following interviews, you will read about some of Becker’s younger fans, from a teenager who faced her own mortality, to students who became passionate about Becker and Terror Management Theory. You will see from these interviews the various ways in which Becker’s ideas resonate for each individual, and how Becker has helped shape their understanding of the world, particularly when it comes to conflict based on differences in culture and experience.

Each week, we get emails with questions about Becker’s work from all over the world. This itself is a testament to the EBF’s valuable role as a hub for people seeking to learn more about Becker and to connect with others who are familiar with Becker’s synthesis.

When I was 14, I was diagnosed with a sarcoma brain tumor, and for the next two months I was trying to figure out, “Am I going to cry about the fact that I’m not going to be here in 10 years, not going to be able to learn to drive, etc., or am I going to find a positive way to think about it?” But it was a struggle for a long time. I tried to look to religion; I tried every angle. Religion didn’t resonate with me. But a lot of literature about how people view death—both physically and psychologically—did help. Then I watched the Flight From Death documentary in 2015, which is all about Becker and his ideas, and later I read his books.

The biggest thing I got out of Becker was not being afraid. In reality, death is something that we know is going to happen, but people don’t allow it to be ok. And I’ve never heard it explained that way, and its connection with culture. It really just clicked. People are always trying to justify death, or put the blame on someone, but no one wants to just acknowledge that it’s not a bad thing; it’s natural.

You gain so much more appreciation for life when you face death. One of the weirder things for me was that when the tumor was removed and turned out to be non-cancerous, there was a long time of me going, “Wait, I’m ok?” I would wake up in the middle of the night like, “Shouldn’t I be dead?” So the question was how do I move on, knowing I have the option to live again. It made me a stronger person for it. I wish and hope that people can go through that experience, not necessarily the experience of physically facing death, but of taking the time to really think about it. I think it has made my life a lot more fulfilling. I’m not constantly worried about stupid things; it has put my life into perspective.

People want the illusion of control over death, and they find solace and comfort in whatever makes them feel ok about it. For some people it’s religion. For me, it’s acceptance.

I first discovered Becker in my first semester of my sophomore year when I took a social psychology class. In that class, one of the things that we discussed was Terror Management Theory. The professor explained how people cling to their worldviews, like memberships in certain organizations, associations, or religious groups, to deal with the inevitability of death. And, that group identities also have a lot to do with our self-esteem. I think TMT is very logical if you want to try to explain certain behaviors that you know people have.

It’s interesting because I think people from my generation, the younger generation, have a very morbid sense of humor, because we live in a very unstable world and environment where the future seems pretty bleak right now. So we have this very dark sense of humor where we joke about, “Oh I want to die,” or “I want to be run over by a car right now,” very casually. It’s not unusual for people my age to think, “Maybe in 10 years the world is going to end due to climate change,” or I don’t know, “Maybe the administration is going to kill us all,” or something like that. So we joke about it a lot, we think about it a lot, we see the news, so I guess our mortality salience is constantly high.

I’m also pretty religious, and in my religion we have an emphasis on life after death. This is also mentioned in TMT, that religion is one of the ways people cope with their fear of death. So, that definitely has an impact on me because we believe that if you do good in the world then you’re going to be set for the afterlife. So it really does help to cope with your own mortality when you think, “Yeah, I might die someday, but if I do good, it doesn’t seem as scary anymore,” and it feeds on these things I mentioned before, like social movements and group identity. It just all feeds on to this idea that if I do something good and worthwhile, then death doesn’t seem as scary anymore.

I learned about Becker in one of my upper-division psychology classes—Social Psychology through Cinema. We read selections from The Denial of Death, The Birth and Death of Meaning, and Escape from Evil, so it was heavy in Becker. The more I read, the more it sucked me down the rabbit hole. I could see connections everywhere; it changed my life! Even day to day, if I get frustrated with people, or if people do things that don’t make sense to me, Becker helps put that into perspective. My wheels are always turning now.

It helped put my own life into perspective too. After the Marines, I had no will to really do anything for a while. And it made me realize that because of how deep-seeded my own identity was for the military, and how invested I was into just being a Marine, that once that went away I felt lost. So I think Becker has really helped me improve my self-efficacy at building a more resilient identity.

I also love traveling, so I’ve been through lots of different cultures now. And even despite the changes in culture, the more you study Becker, the more you see which behaviors and coping mechanisms are universal. And what’s shared, what’s underneath everything, is this gravitating towards identity, and towards ritualistic control of environment. Everybody, regardless of culture, seeks out more control when they feel threatened. People always want to find their place.

I always wanted to do something constructive. Even if you won’t live to see the impact, I feel like your life should leave the world better than you came in. That’s my life philosophy, I guess. Even if it doesn’t actually matter, believing that it does helps you improve your life. It gives your life focus. A lot of people say, “Oh, my life has no meaning.” But that doesn’t make any sense. If it has no meaning, then why are you even doing what you’re doing? If you try to ask “Why,” and it’s a fair question, the only solution I can come to that makes any logical sense is that this is what humans are built to be. And I can’t be anything other than a human.

I’m Hindu, but for the first six years of my life I went to a Christian school in Kentucky. We had missionaries come to our school and tell us that if we didn’t worship Jesus Christ we were definitely going to hell, and that worshipping idols is a sin. And I would go home and cry because my whole family is Hindu. So I had a lot of confusion about death from a very young age, and I automatically related death to religion.

After I grew up and had the actual experience of people close to me dying, I started to notice a difference between myself and other people, in that it’s the normal reaction for most people to not want to talk about death, or to shy away from the subject of it. But for me, I really like to talk about it, and to reflect.

In my sophomore year I decided to take a class called Psychology of Terrorism. It was so interesting. In one of the lectures, the professor started talking about Terror Management Theory. Our professor mentioned that one of the creators of the theory, Jeff Greenberg, was at this school [University of Arizona]. My friends and I thought that this was the coolest thing ever. I applied to work in Dr. Greenberg’s lab as a research assistant, and I can honestly say that it took me a full semester working in his lab to really understand TMT, and why people need self-esteem. It took a full semester for that to resonate with me. But once it did, I wondered, why don’t people know about this? People have so many questions about why humans do the things they do, and this kind of theory, and social psychology in general, has a lot of answers that people are maybe just not looking for, or not looking for in the right places.

Learning about TMT has opened my eyes to understanding why I feel anxious about death and how I can combat that. And why it’s ok to have some self-esteem as a barrier that helps you deal with anxiety. It has helped me understand and process more, but I definitely haven’t finished with the process.

I took Abnormal Psychology my sophomore year in college, where we read Luke Karamazov. The book was about two serial killers, and throughout the book, the author, Conrad Hilberry, used Ernest Becker to try and understand the behavior of these two men. But, instead of villainizing them or chalking them up to them being “crazy,” he was really trying to understand their motivations on a deeper level. He would take a quote from Becker, and then apply it to information he had about the two individuals. Hilberry framed the behavior of these serial killers as a maladaptive attempt to create a hero system in which they were the central figures. I remember finding this so insightful. Whoever this Becker guy was, he really was onto something, and I needed to read more!

After seeing that the quotes came from The Denial of Death, I immediately got my hands on a copy, and pretty much read it nonstop over a few days. My mind was blown; it was as if everything I had ever observed about the world but had never been able to express or put into words was finally articulated in an accessible and relatable way. Having this deeper understanding has really helped me comprehend a lot of the prejudice and hate we see in our world, and has motivated me to try and find ways that we can reduce it.

I googled Ernest Becker to find out more about him, and that led me to the Ernest Becker Foundation. I reached out to get some more information about him, and thanks to information on their website, this was also when I discovered the field of Terror Management Theory. The fact that there is a whole field of psychology dedicated to the empirical application of these ideas blew my mind even more, and I knew I had to be involved. I kept reading and learning everything I could about Becker and TMT. I worked for a year in Dr. Jeff Greenberg’s TMT lab, which then led to my working for the Becker Foundation, where I hope to be able to continue to spread this knowledge and work to reduce prejudice.