Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour

Terror Management Theory (TMT) was developed with the aim to provide an organising paradigm for the many phenomena often studied separately in social psychology, such as intergroup relations and morality (Solomon et al., 1991). TMT proposes that humans have more complex abilities to conceptualise the future compared to animals, and with this capacity comes the realisation that death is inevitable (ibid.). It is not necessarily the act of dying that can create debilitating terror (although this, too, can happen for some), but the fear of “absolute annihilation” (ibid., p. 101). Death entails not living, where living is a prerequisite for all behaviour; thus, it takes away all opportunities for enjoyment and growth.

If this fear remained conscious, it would inhibit our ability to carry on with our daily activities (i.e., living), because self-preservation instincts cannot save us from the inevitability of death. As our time alive is limited, so are our opportunities to fulfil our goals, and thus goals should be intentionally prioritised to maximise self-actualisation (Maslow, 1943). Carver and Scheier (1981 cited in Solomon et al., 1991) developed a hierarchy of standards for self-regulation, where maintaining a positive self-image is one of the superordinate goals of human existence. This positive-self image can only be created through self-preservation (i.e., staying alive), which can be achieved directly and symbolically (Solomon et al., 1991). Direct self-preservation is achieved through fulfilling our biological needs (e.g., food, water, shelter); symbolic self-preservation suppresses our conscious awareness of our impending death.

TMT proposes that symbolic self-preservation is achieved through developing a cultural anxiety buffer, which functions through two components: a cultural worldview and self-esteem (Solomon et al., 1991). The authors propose that people derive a sense of personal value through engaging in actions that meet the standards of their culture, such as occupying certain social positions;the extent to which individuals perceive success in meeting these standards helps to develop self-esteem. In sum, people have a life-long occupation of meeting and upholding culturally variable standards of behaviours and roles in their societies, which serve as a distraction from the terror of death (ibid.). I include references for the empirical base of TMT in the “Suggested Readings Section”, as an evaluation of the theory is beyond the scope of this commentary.

Intergroup relations between human and non-human animals
TMT proposes that the role of the cultural anxiety buffer is to keep the terror of death in the unconscious, to allow humans to proceed with daily activities (Pyszczynski et al., 2015). However, reminders of human mortality have been found to increase dislike of non-human animals (Beatson & Halloran, 2007), support for their extermination (Lifshin et al., 2017), as well as denial of similarities between humans and animals (Pyszczynski et al., 2015). This is hypothesised to show that when threatened, humans tend to distance themselves as much as possible from animals, regarding them as an out-group (Tajfel & Turner, 2001). This finding is moderated by participant characteristics such as personality type (Pyszczynski et al., 2015), belief in mind-body dualism (Heflick et al., 2015), age (Kahane & Caviola, 2022) and most likely cultural background. This behaviour aligns with the predictions of Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2001), which proposes that when we categorise ourselves to be a part of a social group, we identify with their values, creating a clear distinction between those that belong to the social group and those who do not. To maintain self-esteem, the in-group must compare favourably to out-groups, which may be achieved through discrimination: unequal treatment on account of group membership (Williams et al., 2003).

Discrimination against animals may be based on assumptions that they do not have the cognitive capacity to feel emotions or think, especially if they are less phylogenetically similar to us (Prato-Previde et al., 2022). These assumptions can devalue non-human animals compared to humans, and have been used as a justification for animal maltreatment. However, the perspective of intergroup relations can be used to create more positive relations between humans and animals; for example, some propose that bolstering a sense of human-animal solidarity—“a sense of belonging, psychological attachment and closeness” (Amiot & Bastian, 2017, p. 2)—predicts more positive attitudes and behaviours towards animals. Categorising animals as a part of our in-group may avoid triggering the cultural anxiety buffer; or at the very least, acknowledging the moral nature of all living beings may discourage unfair treatment towards animals.

Child development of morality
The reader may then ask: “When do we begin to see ourselves as separate from non-animals, if ever?” Some research suggests that young children are socialised by adults to see moral differences between human and non-human animals (Pallotta, 2008). Ideologies and social practices (i.e., the cultural worldview in TMT) are thought to influence the cross-cultural variation seen in attitudes towards non-human animals, for example if they are regarded as pets, food, research tools, or other categories. Young children do not yet understand the implications and finality of death, so they do not yet contend with the terror of absolute annihilation (Solomon et al., 1991). As they mature, children come to understand that their caregivers, and by extension, themselves, are not infallible in the face of death (ibid.). To deal with this emergent terror, children internalise the values endorsed in the cultural-worldview in their environment; this builds their self-esteem, and helps sustain a sense of their own symbolic immortality as they mature (ibid.).

​​Although attitudes surrounding non-human animal treatment have been found to differ cross-culturally (Bruder et al., 2022), some researchers theorise that humans use the same underlying moral mechanism when faced with comparing humans and animals: multi-level weighted deontology (Kahane & Caviola, 2022). This mechanism applies moral constraints on harming both human and non-human animals, but it is much weaker when considering non-human animals (ibid.). This mechanism is supported by findings that adult humans appear to value human lives significantly higher than non-human lives, even in the absence of the capacity to think and suffer in humans compared to animals (ibid.). However, this differentiation between man and animal is not nearly as pronounced in children. For example, Kahane and Caviola (ibid.) conducted an experiment that gave a moral dilemma to save one human or either one, two, ten or one hundred dogs to US adults and 6- to 10-year-old-children. While adults typically valued the life of a human 100 times more than the life of a dog, 71% of children prioritised 100 dogs over one human. Interestingly, adults’ and children’s ratings of cognitive and hedonic capacities in both humans and animals were similar. Despite this, children were less morally anthropocentric than adults (ibid.), suggesting that the gradual socialisation of children can create a sharp moral divide between humans and non-humans.

To maintain a positive self-esteem, TMT proposes that people act in accordance with the cultural worldview they are socialised in (Solomon et al., 1991). Depending on the cultural worldview, animals can have symbolic meanings or stereotypes that prompt positive or negative reactions, which likely influences how people behave toward them. Thus, behaviours towards animals that are congruent with the prevalent cultural worldview are reinforced across development.

Emotional development and attachment
Attachment literature indicates that children use caregivers as secure bases during their development, to whom they return in situations of distress (Ainsworth, 1979). A secure attachment between children and caregivers has been found to be beneficial for developing an adaptive internal working model (Bowlby, 1980), which is an internal template on which future relations are built. Thus, positive and secure attachments to caregivers in infancy can translate to mutually beneficial relations between humans and animals, as seen in the well-documented cases of successful pet keeping (Amiot & Santerre-Bélec, 2022). 

However, negative experiences with caregivers in infancy can result in an insecure or disorganised attachment, which may impair internal working model formation (Bowlby, 1980). For example, insecure attachment in adults has been strongly associated with animal-hoarding disorder (AHD), where an individual feels the compulsion to “save” as many animals as possible, despite limited ability to take care of them all (Prato-Previde et al., 2022). The accumulation of animals beyond the ability to provide them all with appropriate care results in negative and even fatal consequences for the animals; their caregivers are reluctant to admit that they are not caring for their pets appropriately, and exhibit severe distress upon separation. Disorganised attachment and conduct disorder are two more important correlates of animal mistreatment and abuse, which can start from childhood (ibid.). TMT may explain these links by suggesting that an inappropriate outlet for managing the terror of death leads to inappropriate emotion regulation strategies across development, with more severe consequences for human-animal relations as the human’s ability to create harm increases.

Conclusion and further reading
TMT is a useful paradigm that can organise findings across several areas of social and developmental psychology, by suggesting that human actions are driven by the unconscious terror of death. These findings can be applied to human-animal relations:

• our tendency to prefer in-groups can be leveraged to improve human–animal relations through human–animal solidarity;
• human moral intuitions are deontologically weak with respect to animals, as a result of socialisation in a particular cultural worldview;
• animal treatment can be a reflection of (dys)functional emotional development.

This commentary presents broad, non-exhaustive applications of TMT at the expense of rigorous critiques of the evidence base. For further in-depth discussion, see Pyszczynski and colleagues (2015).