2 years, 2 days, and 2 hours
Drew Westen, nearly 2 years ago, published a bookin which he discussed Terror Management Theory (TMT).
My father-in-law, 2 days ago, wrote me an email so full of Glenn Beck-isms and loony-tunes talk that it reminded me of the Westen book.
2 hours ago, I read a diary by Teacherkenthat inspired me to write this diary.
I've reached the conclusion that the whole teabag party protest movement can be explained by Westen's interpretation of TMT, and that my father-in-law is a living, breathing example of it in action.
A Caveat
I've read more than a dozen "Help me, my once sane relative has gone batshit-crazy with the Glenn-Beck-Bill-O'Reilly-ophrenia" diaries. I once wrote one of them myself. But it bugs me that they generate hundreds of "It's too late, just forget about them, they're too far gone" comments.
Today, I'd rather discuss possible reasons why these things are happening, and I think I've found one...
But, first, what is TMT?
The Denial Of Death
Westen claims TMT was born from the pages of a book that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, written by a man named Ernest Becker, "The Denial of Death." In it, Becker argues that human beings are alone among animals in that we are self-aware, and can, therefore, predict and anticipate our own deaths. As a result, we would be unable to go on, frozen in time and space, if we had not come up with some way(s) for distracting ourselves from the "terror" of our own impending doom. Therefore, we have political parties, political ideologies, organized religions, professional sports teams, and even Susan Boyle. Basically, anything cultural that people use to come together and feel a sense social connection and distraction from the personal terror of our individual, and inevitable, demise. In Becker's lingo, these things are "immortality projects," or "heroism projects."
One of the big conclusions of the Becker book is that some heroism projects contradict others. These contradictions are the sources of wars, racism, and other human conflicts, including political and economic rivalries.
One could conclude that the mere existence of a different immortality project from one's own implies that one's own is flawed, or incomplete. Therefore, the way back to meaningfulness in the face of death is the destruction of rival points of view.
I think any Ohio State or Michigan fan might intuitively understand, and even agree with this argument, let alone a Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or even Markos Moulitsas.
Terror Management Theory
Westen goes further, though, by introducing the work of 3 researchers: Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. They discovered that when reminded of their own mortality, that experimental test subjects became more conservative. This is a remarkable and stunning finding, and goes a LONG way to explaining why fear is a key emotion in the current iterations of rightwing media pundits. Beck's War Room goes out of its way to scare its audience because it makes them more conservative, and more likely to watch future episodes of Beck's show as a result!
Proof, you ask? Well, let's look at some from Westen's book:
- Christian college students given information about a Christian student and a Jewish student showed no preference for either outside that predicted by chance, until an experimental group was asked about their thoughts about their own deaths. The experimental group favored the Christian student. (p. 366)
- During the Red Scare and the McCarthy era, "religious books were the best sellers, and conservatives successfully added, 'under God' to the pledge of allegiance." (p. 367)
- College students in 2004 were asked who they preferred to vote for, Kerry or Bush. As predicted, the control condition students chose Kerry, 4 to 1. Those who answered the death question first "went for Bush 2 to 1." (p. 367)
- An Iranian colleague ran a similar experiment on students in Baghdad. One group was asked to describe "extreme dental pain" and the other "to jot down...what you think will happen to you as you physically die." Each group was then shown two responses to extreme martyrdom, one by a student who argued life is too precious to be wasted in political protests like suicide bombings. The other argued that "The United States represents the world power which Allah wants us to destroy." The dental-pain students (control condition) expressed disinterest in the pro-martyrdom statement. The death-question students approved of the pro-martyrdom statement and expressed interest in joining the cause.
And some from one of Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski's articles:
"Empirical support for TMT theory has been obtained in over 250 experiments by researchers in 13 countries, primarily by demonstrating that reminders of death (mortality salience) in the form of open-ended questions, questionnaires, pictures of gory accidents, inverviews in front of funeral parlors, and subliminal exposure to the words 'death' or 'dead,' instigate cultural worldview defense."
And, for me, the most convincing bit of evidence regarding the Glenn Beck ratings phenomenon:
The authors also constructed three hypothetical leaders, the "charismatic," the "task-oriented," and the "relationship-oriented." Each was represented by a statement.
- Charismatic: "You are not just an ordinary citizen; you are part of a special state and a special nation."
- Task: "I can accomplish all the goals that I set out to do. I am very careful in laying out a detailed blueprint of what needs to be done so that there is no ambiguity."
- Relationship: "I encourage all citizens to take an active role in improving their state. I know that each individual can make a difference."
Only 4 of 95 respondents, after contemplating "a control topic" chose the charismatic leader as their preference. However,
following a reminder of death, there was almost an 800% increase in votes for the charismatic leader (31); votes for the task-oriented leader were unaffected, but the relationship-oriented leader's votes significantly declined.
The key to the insidiousness of this is that the appeal to death or fear need not be overt, explicit, or obvious. Simply saying that the government is coming for your guns is enough to trigger entire networks of fear, death-thoughts, and defensive posturing. The priming effect of these nearly unconscious cues is part of what makes them so powerful. For example, I have a few of my HS students each year walk down the hallway and walk back. Others measure how long it takes them to go each way. Usually, each walking student's times are within 1 second of each other (they are instructed to walk at the same pace in both directions as a control for nervousness, etc...). Other students walk down, and unscramble 10 sentences I have scrambled up before walking back. Each sentence contains words most people associate with being old. Words like Florida, grandparents, bones, sleepy, gray, etc... These experimental students average a 3 to 5 second slower return than approach. That I can influence their walking stride without them knowing it is a revelation. These appeals to death and fear work very much the same way-literally under the radar.
Fathers-In-Law
This is the part where I'm not asking for sympathy or advice, but simply laying the groundwork for the conclusion to follow. This section is my comment from Teacherken's diary earlier today that prompted this diary:
shared a mutual respect from opposite political positions on most things, have stopped speaking to/emailing each other this week over the tea party situation.
He wrote me 4 or 5 stinging emails in a row about how misrepresented the tea party people have been in the mass media, about how only FOX news represented them correctly/accurately, and how everyone at the Houston-suburbia tea party were normal, super-patriotic, tax-hating Americans, just like I and his daughter should be.
He was lamenting how she has turned her back on everything he raised her to be by espousing liberal viewpoints and voting for Barack Obama.
He is a Filipino immigrant whose wife's career has been spent as a registered nurse in the Veterans Administration hospital system. He was a civil accountant in Chicago and Houston, who draws a monthly pension and health care from city and federal agencies and medicare and medicaid.
I finally had to write back.
When I asked who would pay his wife's salary and benefits, and his own, if all the people protesting taxation had their way, he simply said that government is a corrupt and rotten institution, and that we shouldn't talk politics anymore with each other as he can't believe how he and I could be so different in our believes about such a fundamental part of being "American."
I anticipated the day when our relationship would become one of quiet tolerance rather than give-and-take conversation.
I blame Glenn Beck for that.
When I asked my father-in-law about these right-wing acts of domestic violence, his simple reply was that none of that could be proved, and that the Homeland report was just more evidence that this administration wants to demonize conservatives by accusing them of being violent terrorists.
That fear, defensiveness, and perception of being persecuted is a volatile mix.
Conclusion(s)
I suspect that Glenn Beck in preparing for his "War Room" broadcast (which my FIL absolutely devoured, emailing about it for two weeks afterward), and drumbeating for the tea bag parties, wasn't aware of all this research, or has someone on his team who is. Since his debut on Fox, his ratings have climbed and my anecdotal story of a father-in-law who has gone from engaging in polite political sparring with me to outright condemnation and "we can't talk about this any more" stiff-arming has been repeated by others on this site, and others in my personal life. I really have to wonder if the fear-mongering is intentional, or whether the other side intuitively understands the basic argument in Becker, et. al.
Westen points out that previous American leaders during times of true fearfulness, like the the Civil War, Great Depression, WWII, etc... reassured Americans, instead of provoking them to heightened states of fearfulness. That was the brilliance of "nothing to fear but fear itself," and in it's own twisted way, the brilliance of Rove, Cheney, and now Beck's calls to be fearful of the government, fearful of the terrorists, and fearful of the liberals.
In other words, if a political leader is telling you to be afraid of something, they probably don't have your best interests in mind, but their own.
Westen also laments:
The fact that most people reading this book will have just heard of terror management theory for the first time is a profound indictment of the Democratic Party.
Now, at least, if you've read this far, you can't say you've never heard of it any longer.
Thank you, Mr. Westen for providing me with some much-needed meaning.