Existential social psychology

Question 1

existentialism as a philosophy

Answer 1

each individual creates their own value and determines their own meaning

Question 2

angst and dread

Answer 2

negative feelings arising from the burdens of freedom and responsibility, and the strain of realising there is no objective moral truth apart, or proper behaviour, or correct roles or norms apart from human creation

Question 3

terror management theory

Answer 3

humans have this capacity for self-awareness but this awareness renders us aware that ultimately we will die and so will everyone we value. theory argues this could create terror.

Question 4

Leo Tolstoy

Answer 4

is there any meaning in life that death does not undo and destroy?

Question 5

TMT hypothesis 1

Answer 5

when reminded of death, people will defend their beliefs more strongly

Question 6

TMT hypothesis 2

Answer 6

self-esteem protects people against morality concerns

Question 7

terror management support: defending worldviews

Answer 7

increases support for aggression that is used by your culture, increases aggression towards people who are of different beliefs, increases desired punishment for people who commit moral transgressions.

Question 8

when death is salient

Answer 8

• people display increased efforts to either protect or increase self-esteem
• attributions for success, for instance; humour study; agreement with positive feedback

Question 9

meaning maintenance model

Answer 9

posits that people have a general need to pursue meaning. When meaning is threatened, people will thus show increased efforts to restore meaning

Question 10

meaning threats

Answer 10

• mortality salience, switching experiments subtly

- viewing red spaded and black hearts

Question 11

meaning threats have been found to

Answer 11

increase worldview defence, need for structure, preference for meaningful/clear art, increase direction of patterns

Question 12

meaning as information

Answer 12

argues that meaning is an important source of information. when meaning is salient in the environment in one domain, it will increase meaning in other domains

Question 13

god and social morality

Answer 13

• god primes can increase pro-social behaviour

- belief in hell correlates with less crime cross-culturally

Question 14

factors related to belief

Answer 14

mortality salience increases explicit belief and implicit belief even for atheists

Question 15

religion as a group vs. belief system

Answer 15

• religion serves many functions similar to a social group

- thus, some people belong to religion as it is a type of group/serves social functions

Question 16

shared reality theory

Answer 16

people seek out mutual understanding in order to regulate relationships and to perceive their environments as stable and potentially controllable

Question 17

existential isolation

Answer 17

this is the notion that we do not feel like other people ‘get us’. this is higher among men due to less valuing of communal traits

Question 18

free will

Answer 18

the idea that our actions are freely chosen; that we can act, think and feel in ways that are entirely under our own volition

Question 19

Pronin’s work

Answer 19

this shows that people will rate themselves as having more free will than others. that is, they think their actions are more freely chosen.

Question 20

Psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966;2013)

Answer 20

the idea that telling someone not to do something increases the desire for them to do it