Mixing Memory recently discussed some social psych experiments regarding Terror Management Theory and the impact of high “mortality salience,” i.e. awareness of one’s own mortality, on a person’s perceptions. Politically, high mortality salience was linked to supporting Bush and conservatism:
In what is probably the most famous set of TMT experiments, Landau et al.2 first showed that priming participants with thoughts of death (as opposed to a neutral control topic) made them more supportive of President Bush. Then, after an experiment showing that thinking of the September 11 attacks increased mortality salience, they showed that thinking of the September 11 attacks also increased support of Bush. In a follow-up study3, Cohen et al. showed that during the 2004 presidential campaign, participants whose mortality salience was high (through a manipulation similar to that in the Landau et al. experiment) were much more likely to say they would vote for Bush than Kerry, while participants in the control condition were much more likely to vote for Kerry than Bush. Apparently, mortality salience makes us more supportive of authority figures, and perhaps a bit more politically conservative as well.
The constant fear of terrorism may appeal to people with a naturally high awareness/fear of their own death, or perhaps that awareness/fear was permanently hiked by coming to believe we could be hit again at any moment. Chicken or egg, a strong mortality salience appears to play a part in causing someone to lean right in the present climate. Since those with lower mortality salience lean left, it may also be safe to assume that most wingnuts would have to have high MS to remain so staunchly conservative these days. Folks who exhibited those qualities also tended to prefer more structure, not less.
TMT studies also focused on the perception of objects without context. For example, when subjects were asked to consider death-related topics before looking at a Jackson Pollack painting with a name like “#12,” they were much less likely to feel positively about the painting than those who viewed it with a more substantive name. The name gave the abstract painting some context, and thus the subjects were a little less likely to project their mortality fears onto it. Without that context, they tended to imbue it with their own negative thoughts.
Quick recap, then: if you have heightened mortality salience, you tend to lean right. In general, you also appear to want more context, not less, for your experiences, because abstraction/nonrepresentation can cause you to project your own death issues into the interpretive space.
This could help explain the popularity amongst conservatives of retread sitcoms and brainless big budget multiplex cliche marathons. Not only are folks spoonfed every little plot development so as to avoid any ambiguity, but they’ve seen the same stories and heard the same jokes a million times before. They’re ensconced in context, which keeps the rabid dog death thoughts at bay. Entertainment with an explicit moral code — anything from Leave It to Beaver to Law & Order — would appeal for the same reasons.
This attitude extends into the policy arena. Earlier this week, Amanda and Paul the Spud at Shakes Sis touched on the No Child Left Behind act. A number of schools have been forced to sacrifice arts (art instruction is down 22% overall) to dedicate resources towards meeting the NCLB mandates. As a result, many children receive only contextual learning like memorization and math skills. Why do I call it contextual learning? Because it’s all about teaching to the test. NCLB stresses standardized measurables, the most comforting kind of knowledge to those who can’t stand interpretation. Teachers and students of underfunded schools aren’t allowed to dabble in the arts or explore a creative curriculum. NCLB is all about black and white because greys are dangerously difficult to evaluate, and if you think like a wingnut, you probably assume kids will find their ambiguity as frightening as you do. It probably never occurs to most conservodrones that children may not share their negative projection issues.
Speaking of projection, if there’s anything scarier than death to the wingnuts, it’s sex. Janet Jackson’s boob flopped out for 1/20th of a second during the Super Bowl. Because it was so unexpected and unprecedented, there was really no context for the experience, no scripted way to feel about it or interpret it. As a result, the sex negative crowd flipped shit. All of a sudden, the network and the NFL and Janet were out to poison the minds of children and destroy American decency. This seems to follow the same pattern of behavior demonstrated in the study: sans context, the structure-hungry crowd spattered their emotional garbage onto the blank canvas of the event.
As the news forcefeeds us the administration’s endless spewage on 9/11 and the War on Terror, mortality salience increases. As children lose access to art and interpretive spaces in educational settings, they may begin to need/want/expect contextualization for every aspect of their life. And if you’re scared to death and can’t think for yourself, guess what that makes you?
If you answered “Karl Rove’s,” you won’t hear disagreement from me.
Brilliant post. If you liked that post from Mixing Memory, I’d recommend subscribing to the feed for that blog. He doesn’t blog often, but when he does, it’s usually fascinating.