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elements that provide them with the most security. Much of the research reviewed earlier supports the idea that there is a strong, although not inexorable, tendency for people to respond to threat by defending and leaning more heavily on the dominant, self-defining aspects of their worldviews (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1993; Hirschberger & Ein-Dor, 2006; Pyszczynski et al., 2006; Rothschild et al., 2007; Weise et al., 2008).

Despite this general tendency to rely on worldview elements that are central to one’s self-definition, there are also likely certain specific characteristics of worldview elements that make them especially comforting. As Jost and colleagues (2003ab, 2004b) have argued, structure, certainty, consistency, and justice may be especially comforting to people in times of threat, especially for people who value these entities. Their review of those personality characteristics associated with conservative ideology supports this advantage for these types of worldview elements. Similarly, research by Landau and colleagues has shown that mortality salience increases preferences for well-structured, consistent, just, and certain arrays of information, and decreases attraction to stimuli that are difficult to perceive meaning in, such as abstract art (e.g., Landau, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Martens, 2006; Landau et al., 2004). Most of these effects of mortality salience on preferences for well-structured information were exclusive to individuals with high needs for structure; indeed, participants with low personal need for structure tended to exhibit reduced preference for structure after mortality salience, albeit nonsignificantly so.

As described earlier, Cohen and colleagues (2004) and Greenberg and colleagues (2007) found that mortality salience increased preferences for a worldview supporting a charismatic leader, one who emphasizes the group’s greatness. This suggests that ideologies that boost collective selfesteem have some advantage, perhaps because, as social identity theory (Turner, Brown, & Tajfel, 1979) suggests, the value of one’s group is intimately tied to one’s value as a person. Given the role that self-esteem plays in managing existential terror, it seems likely that ideologies that boost selfesteem would have some advantages. However, circumstances likely exist in which people will forgo a boost to self-esteem in order to maintain treasured beliefs that are especially important to their security.

Worldviews that provide hope of literal immortality are also likely to be favored because of the special kind of security that they provide. Dechesne and co-workers’ (2003) research demonstrated that even atheists provided with information implying the existence of life after death (in the form of bogus summaries of a scientific conference on the “near death experience”) were less likely to respond to mortality salience with the worldview defense and self-esteem striving that were found in the absence of such information.

Taken together, these lines of research suggest that elements of worldviews that imply structure, certainty, justice, ingroup value, and literal immortality may be particularly effective for terror management purposes, and thus become increasingly popular when people’s need for protection is high. These features seem to be well-represented in the neo-conservative ideology of the Republican party in the United States over the last three decades. This may, in part, account for the rise in support for such ideology in response to the threat posed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, as we have argued throughout this chapter, a preference for such ideologies may reflect a wide variety of motives and does not, in and of itself, implicate a system-justifying motive.

Pyszczynski and colleagues (2003) referred to this sort of rigidly structured authoritarian and traditionalist ideology as “the Rock,” and argued that the certainty and structure it provides makes it a relatively easy place to find protection, at least for persons with strong affinities for these psychological entities. However, they also discussed the appeal of a less rigid and less authoritarian liberal ideology that seems more consonant with the values of freedom, equality, open scientific inquiry, and other Enlightenment ideals. They referred to such less certain liberal ideologies as “the Hard Place,” because of the uncertainty and ambiguity with which its adherents must learn to cope. Despite the ambiguities and uncertainties of “the Hard Place” liberal ideology, it has the advantages of fitting well with many of the ideals of modern Western civilization, science, and humanistically oriented interpretations of religious teachings from many faiths. Thus, although the well-structured, simple, and certain answers provided by contemporary extreme right-wing and left-wing ideologies have a great deal of appeal to many people with particular psychological orientations, needs, and socialization experiences, more moderate liberal ideologies may appeal to people with different personalities, experiences, and values. Findings that certain personality variables correlate with allegiance to right-wing ideologies, which are interpreted as meeting the needs associated with these personality variables, implies that low levels of these personality variables are associated with preference for left-wing ideologies. We strongly suspect that such individuals do not lack satisfaction of psychological needs or are suffering from the lack of satisfaction of their needs, but rather that they are oriented toward other ways of finding security, which bias them toward liberal ideologies.

As noted earlier, research has demonstrated threat-induced shifts toward both rightand left-wing positions, and that these shifts depend on both individual differences in political orientation and situational factors. In addition to the priming of particular values that encourage alignment with rightor left-wing positions (e.g., Rothschild et al., 2007), it seems likely that events and information available in the current historical milieu also affect

the appeal of different ideological positions. Political preferences often seem to resemble pendulums that swing back and forth from right to left with changing times and events. This metaphor suggests an inherent instability in political ideology and the existence of forces that promote changes over relatively short periods of time.

Recent changes in the political fortunes of G. W. Bush and his neoconservative policies in the United States provide a good example of the impact of events and information on political preferences. Although over 90% of Americans approved of Bush’s performance and policies for several months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, by spring of 2007, his approval ratings had dropped below 35%, dipping into the 20s in some polls (About. com:US Politics, 2007). Although we can only speculate about what caused this dramatic reversal in Bush’s fortune, it seems likely that news about the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the violence and bloodshed that continued there long after he declared “mission accomplished,” the inept response to Hurricane Katrina, and the long list of scandals surrounding the use of torture, wiretaps, secret prisons, and politically motivated firing of attorney generals provided evidence that only his most diehard supporters could discount or ignore. Motivated social cognition theorists generally agree that although attitudes and judgments are most certainly biased by people’s motives and expectations, people must maintain an “illusion of objectivity” regarding the informational bases for their conclusions in order for these biases to be effective (e.g., Kunda, 1999; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987). Available information and evidence must play at least some role in politically relevant cognition.

An additional pathway by which existential concerns might influence ideological beliefs and judgments is suggested by Gailliot, Schmeichel, and Baumeister’s (2006) recent findings that coping with thoughts of death deplete self-regulatory resources. To the extent that self-regulatory resources are needed to process, integrate, and use complex information, these findings suggest that coping with death concerns might also lead to a preference for simple solutions and emotionally satisfying beliefs because it requires less self-regulatory effort to sustain such conclusions. Whereas TMT posits that death concerns lead to a preference for ideologies that provide maximal protection, and a large body of evidence has supported this proposition, the finding that mortality salience depletes self-regula- tory resources suggests that the problem of death may also make it more difficult for people to evaluate complex arguments and may bias people toward simple answers to complex problems. The upshot of this is that coping with death-related thoughts might create a bias for both previously held and simple explanations by undermining complex thinking. Landau

and colleagues’ (2004) research on the effect of mortality salience on preference for simple and well-structured information is consistent with this possibility.

CONCLUSION

In sum, research has documented a diverse set of variables that determine which aspects of one’s worldview people will rely on when their need for protection is heightened. To the extent that worldviews are complex and multifaceted, it follows that the more accessible a worldview element, the more likely people will turn to it when protection is needed. Although chronic, self-defining aspects of worldviews are often preferred because they are the ones that people have long relied on for security, and are thus likely to be chronically high in accessibility, other variables also influence this process. Recently primed elements have been shown to be especially influential—such priming can result from the individual’s choices of what information to seek and avoid; intentional influence attempts by friends, media, or powerful others; or mere happenstance. Worldview elements that provide structure, meaning, stability, self-esteem, and the promise of immortality are also likely to be especially influential. Because people’s beliefs and inferences reflect a compromise between their biases and the information to which they are exposed, information about significant events in the world, whether presented by the media in objective or biased ways, also likely plays an important role.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of factors that influence which aspects of one’s worldview a person will turn to for security. And at this point, we are providing more of a list of influences that have been supported by empirical research than a thorough conceptual analysis of how these factors interact with each other to determine attitudes and behavior. A much clearer theoretical specification of these processes is sorely needed and should be a high priority for future theory development and research.

Unfortunately, death is a fact of life that will never go away. Ideologies, regardless of whether they are steeped in religious, political, humanistic, or scientific traditions, provide a buffer against the anxiety inherent to the human condition. From the perspective of TMT, the ideological rift currently plaguing America may be traced, at its root, to the different ways in which people cope with the existential terror that is part and parcel of the human condition. Although we might be able to reduce the weight that human aggression adds to our existential burden, the fear of death is a problem that will always be with us. What is needed, then, are less fragile and more constructive ways of defusing this most basic of all human fears.

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