Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges : A Relational Approach to Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory

Evolutionary Psychology
human-nature.com/ep – 2005. 3: 297-325
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Original Article

Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges: A Relational Approach to
Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory

Carlos David Navarrete, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1285
Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1563, USA. Email: cdn@ucla.edu.

Daniel M.T. Fessler, Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture and Department of Anthropology,
341 Haines Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553, USA. Email: dfessler@anthro.ucla.edu.

Abstract: Adherence to ingroup ideology increases after exposure to death-related
stimuli, a reaction that proponents of terror management theory (TMT) explain as a
psychological defense against the uniquely human existential fear of death. We argue
that existential concerns are not the relevant issue; rather, such concepts can be
subsumed under a larger category of adaptive challenges that prime coalitional
thinking. We suggest that increases in adherence to ingroup ideology in response to
adaptive challenges are manifestations of normative mental representations
emanating from psychological systems designed to enhance coordination and
membership in social groups. In providing an alternative to TMT, we (1) explain why
the theory is inconsistent with contemporary evolutionary biology, (2) demonstrate
that mortality-salience does not have the unique evocative powers ascribed to it by
TMT advocates, and (3) discuss our approach to coalitional psychology, a framework
consistent with modern evolutionary theory and informed by a broad understanding
of cultural variation, can be employed to help account for both the corpus of results in
TMT research and the growing body of findings inconsistent with TMT’s predictions.

Keywords: terror management, coalition formation, intergroup bias, worldview
defense, normative beliefs

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Introduction

On the morning of September 11, 2001, many citizens of the United States
awoke to news of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Almost immediately thereafter, patriotic sentiments
increased radically driving up sales of flags and other patriotic merchandise. A
spokesperson for Valley Forge Flag Company in Pennsylvania noted that “in an

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Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges
average year, consumers purchase about two million house flags. On September 11,
2001, twenty-five to thirty million people wanted house flags instantly” (Gaffin,
2004). Americans also became less tolerant of views critical of the United States and
its foreign policy. For comments deemed too insensitive in a post-9/11 television
environment, wiseacre Bill Maher was widely criticized and eventually dismissed as
the host of a popular night-time political talk show. Some patriotic Americans even
took this previously latent intolerance for ideological heterogeneity to violent
extremes, aggressing against those perceived to share membership in the ethnic group
of the alleged perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. Human Rights Watch reported that
anti-Arab bias crimes in the U.S. increased 1700% in the days following September
11 (Human Rights Watch, 2002).
There have been many attempts to understand adherence to and defense of
national ideologies and values, intolerance of dissent, and hostility towards dissimilar
others. However, few have sought to ask why such intergroup bias varies as a
function of the degree of national emergency, and why it differs between individuals.
In the wake of events surrounding the September 11 attacks, terror management
theory (TMT, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon, 1986) has emerged as the
leading source of answers to these and related questions. To get a sense of the impact
of this perspective, consider the following: the exact phrase “terror management
theory” produces 1,560 hits on the Google Internet search engine, and 373 hits on the
PsychInfo electronic database of psychological literature. Clearly, TMT is a force to
be reckoned with in contemporary social science. TMT explains the increase in
patriotism and the concomitant decrease in tolerance of dissent since September 11 as
defensive reactions against existential fear elicited by the images of death and
destruction to which everyday Americans were exposed (Pyszczynski, Solomon, and
Greenberg, 2002). Proponents of this perspective have drawn on a substantial corpus
of empirical results in support of their views, pointing to over one hundred
experiments that demonstrate that such defensive reactions increase as a function of
exposure to death-related stimuli (for a review see: Solomon, Greenberg, Schimel,
Arndt, and Pyszczynski, 2004).
In this paper we present an alternative approach to understanding the impact
of exposure to threat on intergroup ideological bias. We suggest how increases in
adherence to ingroup ideology, intolerance of opposing views, and derogation of
dissimilar others can be interepreted as behavioral manifestations of normative
mental representations emanating from psychological systems designed to enhance
individual acceptance in, and coordination with, social groups. These normative
mental representations increase in the face of adaptive challenges that can be
addressed through marshalling social support. In providing an alternative to TMT, we
describe the theoretical difficulties of TMT—central to which is the claim that it is
consistent with modern evolutionary social science. We present a view of fitness
threats and adherence to ingroup norms that is consistent with evolutionary theory,
and is informed by a broader view of cultural variation. Finally, we evaluate these
competing perspectives in light of the available evidence.
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Terror Management Theory

“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing
else; it is a mainspring of human activity—designed largely to avoid
the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is
the final destiny of man.”
—Ernest Becker

While terror management theory (Greenberg et al., 1986; Greenberg,
Solomon, and Pyszczynski, 1997; Pyszczynski et al., 2002; Solomon et al., 2004)
owes a scholarly debt to a wide variety of influences (Freud, 1929; Kierkegaard,
1844; Rank, 1936), it was primarily inspired by the work of the anthropologist Ernst
Becker (1962; 1973), who proposed that the uniquely human capacity to recognize
the inevitability of one’s own death produces deep, existential fear that pervades all
aspects of the human condition. According to Becker, as organisms with an instinct
for self-preservation, the knowledge of the inevitability of death creates the potential
for a chronic condition of debilitating anxiety—an adaptive problem that our species
overcomes through a series of symbolic defense mechanisms. This collection of
mechanisms is mediated through an ethnocentric cultural construction of reality, a
“cultural worldview.”
Terror management theorists have insightfully elaborated on Becker’s rather
intuitive claim that a key function of cultural worldviews is to manage the fear of
death. Faith in a worldview is said to be important in assuaging death terror, as
worldviews are thought to provide a sense of real or symbolic immortality—real in
the sense that they provide promises of an afterlife; symbolic in the sense that they
provide a system of meaning and stability that is larger than the individual and
persists after the individual’s death. According to this view, ethnocentrism is in large
part caused by a defensive reaction to outgroup ideologies. Merely knowing that
others hold values and beliefs different from those of the established ingroup
challenges the validity of the individual’s culturally constructed worldview, thus
reducing its usefulness as an anxiety buffer. TMT theorists argue that individuals are
therefore motivated to buffer themselves from this anxiety by bolstering their faith in
their own worldview. This is done by affirming one’s core beliefs, derogating
outgroups, and, in extreme cases, aggressing against or annihilating those who do not
share one’s views (Greenberg et al., 1997).
Because the individual’s worldview provides protection against death
concerns, according to TMT, reminding individuals of the prospect of their own death
should increase the need for this cultural buffer. TMT researchers have shown that
participants in experiments who are asked to contemplate their own deaths exhibit
increases in positive evaluations of people whose attitudes and values are similar to
their own, and derogation of those holding dissimilar views. TMT theorists claim that
these changes reflect an attempt by participants to defend their cultural worldviews in
order to buffer themselves from the fear of death. Among other “worldview-defense
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tactics”, mortality-salience induction has been shown to lead to harsher evaluations of
moral transgressors, attitudinally dissimilar others, and those who criticize the
worldview of the ingroup. Conversely, mortality-salience induction also
demonstrably elicits positive evaluative biases towards those who uphold ingroup
moral standards, who are attitudinally similar, and who explicitly bolster the view of
the ingroup (Greenberg, Arndt, Schimel, Pyszczynski, and Solomon, 2001;
Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, and et al., 1990; Harmon-Jones,
Greenberg, Solomon, and Simon, 1996; Pyszczynski et al., 2002; Rosenblatt,
Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, and et al., 1989).

Theoretical Difficulties with TMT

While TMT has led to an impressive corpus of research, with detailed
predictions being borne out by careful and creative experimental work, numerous
authors have noted problems with the theory itself (Boyer, 2001; Buss, 1997;
Kirkpatrick, 1999; Navarrete, Kurzban, Fessler, and Kirkpatrick, 2004; Paulhus and
Trapnell, 1997). The principal architects of TMT claim that theirs is an evolutionary
theory (Pyszczynski et al., 2002; Solomon et al., 2004). Here, we take issue with
proponents’ assertions that TMT is broadly consistent with the principles and
findings of modern evolutionary social science. In doing so, we critique (1) the
assumption of a “survival instinct” on which the theory hinges, (2) the notion of an
adaptive function for anxiety reduction, and (3) the idea that cultural worldviews are
inherently anxiety-buffering.
Survival instinct. TMT proponents make reference to a “survival instinct,” a
motivational system that purportedly causes all organisms to seek to avoid their own
deaths (Greenberg et al., 1997). However, there are principled grounds on which to
doubt that such an instinct exists in any species, our own included.
Modern evolutionary biology is premised on the supposition that, when in
their natural environment, individual organisms generally function in ways which
increase the likelihood that their genes will be favorably represented in future
generations. Neither ensuring immediate survival nor enhancing longevity is expected
to constitute an invariant goal, since such objectives often detract from reproductive
success (Hamilton, 1964; Williams, 1966). In short, sometimes organisms avoid
situations that cause bodily harm, sometimes they are indifferent to such situations,
and sometimes they actively seek them out, depending on the ultimate consequences
of a given action for reproductive success. For example, if Alaskan salmon were
oriented towards self-preservation and driven by a survival instinct, they would
remain in the ocean during the breeding season, safely distant from the gaping jaws of
the predatory grizzly bears lining the banks of the streams that lead to their breeding
grounds. Salmon swim upstream at enormous risk of predation and injury in order to
reach the precise pool in which they hatched. Only a small percentage successfully
navigate the hazardous journey; those that do spawn then die of exhaustion. The
salmon alive today are the descendents of individual fish that were motivated to make
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this fatal trek—any fish that favored survival over all else would not have made the
journey, would not have reached the breeding grounds, and would not have left
descendents who could perpetuate their overarching “survival instinct”.
Although the salmon’s behavior is complex, consisting of long-distance
travel, intricate navigation, and elaborate mating interactions, it is reasonable to
describe these actions as instinctive. Stereotyped species-typical behavior having
positive fitness consequences fits the definition of an instinct, a mechanism which
generates a patterned behavioral response under highly specified stimulus conditions
(Darwin, 1859). Contrary to the premises of TMT, avoiding death does not fit the
definition of an instinct, since strategies for staying alive are contingent on the nature
of the challenge confronting the organism at a given time. While journeying upstream
to their deaths, salmon veer away from looming shadows and arch their bodies
violently when stranded. These responses are patterned and situation-specific–
although they have the common higher-level outcome of temporarily enhancing
survival, survival per se is not a goal of the organism (cf. Oehman and Mineka,
2001). Interpreting the observation that salmon seem to often attempt to maintain
their existence as evidence of a survival instinct is thus equivalent to arguing that
water runs downhill because of a gravity instinct–both statements mistakenly impute
the presence of an overarching goal. The notion of a survival instinct is thus
unproductive, and for this reason this concept is not a part of the language of modern
evolutionary theory. Organisms respond to specific stimuli in ways that have
consistently been associated with fitness-enhancing outcomes over evolutionary
timescales (Dawkins, 1989; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992; Williams, 1966). Organisms
such as salmon might be afraid of predators, but almost certainly not death, hence it
may be sensible to talk about a “predator-avoidance instinct” (if one must use that
under-specified term), but it makes no sense to talk about organisms having a survival
instinct.
From a broader theoretical perspective, the notion of a “survival instinct” is
problematic on first principles. The emerging consensus within contemporary
evolutionary social science is that highly general motivational systems are unlikely to
evolve, as natural selection can only build mechanisms designed to solve particular
adaptive problems (Barrett, 2005; Boyer, 2000; Buss, 2001; Cosmides and Tooby,
1994, 2002; Pinker, 1997; Rozin, 1976; Symons, 1992). Even if we were to grant that
the concept of a “self-preservation instinct” is a hypothetical construct that refers only
to a general predisposition to orient oneself toward continued life, it is not obvious
how such an imperative could result in any practical guidance of adaptive behavior
(Paulhus and Trapnell, 1997). Organisms do not safely navigate complex
environments because “an orientation for death-avoidance behavior” is programmed
into their nervous systems, but rather because different life-threatening situations
require different adaptive responses. While a problem such as avoiding cliffs (Gibson
and Walk, 1960) is a task that natural selection can design cognitive mechanisms to
solve, avoiding death, per se, is not. Thus the “survival instinct” so often referred to
in popular treatments of evolutionary approaches to behavior is most likely an
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emergent property of a collection of discrete mechanisms, each designed to protect
the organism from particular kinds of dangers, a goal achieved in part through the
generation of anxiety in reaction to specific classes of proximate cues.
TMT notions of a survival instinct and its uniquely human consequences are
not only out of step with evolutionary biology and evolutionary social science, they
are self-contradictory. In evaluating the plausibility of a pan-specific survival
mechanism, consider the following: A generalized instinct to avoid death could only
function through some sort of ability to foresee the ultimate consequences of failing
to avoid hazards (e.g., “If I fall off this cliff my body will be irreparably damaged,
resulting in my demise,” etc.). A “survival instinct” thus necessitates awareness that
events that have not yet occurred will bring an end to one’s life. This is tantamount
to an awareness of one’s own mortality. How then can it be the case that, as TMT
claims, all organisms possess a “survival instinct,” but only humans can foresee their
own deaths? If possessing a “survival instinct” and being aware of one’s mortality
causes paralyzing anxiety that is only remedied through worldview defense, then
either all organisms engage in worldview defense, or else only humans possess a
“survival instinct,” meaning that natural selection created in humans a novel instinct
which, upon its creation, instantly generated paralyzing anxiety in those who
possessed it. Neither possibility is plausible.
In attempting to articulate their perspective in the language of contemporary
evolutionary biology, TMT theorists argue that staying alive is necessary for
reproductive success since, if one does not live long enough to reproduce, then one
will not be reproductively successful (Pyszczynski et al., 1997). While the latter
observation is true to the point of banality, it in no way justifies the TMT premise that
survival is an overarching motive driving behavior. Consider the following: extended
to its logical conclusion, this argument predicts that successful reproduction should
have an exacerbating effect on the frequency of behaviors that entail risk of injury or
death (since individuals who have not yet reproduced should be more vigorous in
their attempts to maximize survival) and, more generally, that the demographic
patterns of bodily risk-taking should reflect the demographic patterns of reproduction
(since the age/sex classes that contain the fewest parents should be the most
cautious). As automobile insurance companies know well, the opposite patterns
obtain—young people take the most risks with their survival, while the middle-aged
are much more cautious; within age/sex classes, marrying (often the first step toward
reproduction) reduces risk-taking, while divorce and widowhood increase it (Daly
and Wilson, 2001; Wilson and Daly, 1985). In short, the relationship between
survival maximization and reproduction is precisely opposite that entailed by the
claim that differential reproductive success favors the existence of a survival instinct.
Unlike TMT, contemporary evolutionary theory has no difficulty explaining the
demographics of risk-taking: natural selection favors behavior to the extent that it
increases access to resources (including social position, mates, and material goods)
that can translate into reproductive success—it is in pursuit of these resources that, far
from attempting to ensure their survival, bachelors the world over often go out of
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their way to flirt with injury and death (Daly and Wilson, 1988).

The function of anxiety reduction

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to
achieve it through not dying.”
—Woody Allen

Like its psychoanalytic forbearers, TMT adopts a nonfunctional approach to
anxiety. Anxiety is seen as an adaptive problem that needs to be overcome.
Specifically, the fear of death ostensibly causes a dysfunctional state of anxiety,
hampering effective psychological functioning. This approach contrasts with a
functionalist view in which emotions are seen as the products of specialized
adaptations crafted by natural selection, with each emotion addressing a discrete class
of adaptive challenges (Cosmides and Tooby, 2000; Fessler and Haley, 2003; Frank,
1988; Izard, 1977; Johnston, 1999; Nesse, 1990; Weisfeld, 1997). From this
perspective, anxiety is generally functional, indexing pressing social or environmental
challenges (Baumeister and Tice, 1990; Buss, 1990). Various forms of anxiety
motivate organisms to engage in behaviors that will ultimately eliminate or alleviate
specific problems–reactions such as fight or flight responses, immobility, backing
away from cliffs, or avoiding certain social interactions each constitute situation-
specific adaptive responses to the fitness challenges indexed by particular types of
anxiety.
While the functionalist view of emotions is wholly compatible with
contemporary evolutionary approaches to mind, the TMT portrait of anxiety is wholly
out of step. It would be quite astonishing were natural selection to produce a
psychology in which, instead of orienting the organism to pressing adaptive
challenges and motivating behavior that addressed them, anxiety regularly produced a
paralytic state that could only be relieved through time-and attention-consuming
mental gymnastics. In contrast to this implausible scenario, an informed evolutionary
perspective suggests that, if anxiety is the product of adaptations that are activated in
the face of specific classes of fitness challenges, then selection should strongly
disfavor additional systems that inhibit anxious responses (Leary and Schreindorfer,
1997; Pelham, 1997). A person feeling anxious sitting on railroad tracks as a train
approaches might feel some relief by thinking warm thoughts about her worldview,
but the problem of imminent annihilation still looms. One would expect that an
adaptive response to the prospect of harm or death would be to engage in behavior
that makes such events less likely, as opposed to merely reducing the anxiety that
flags these prospects. Even if, for some reason, circumstances changed such that most
members of a species were regularly reacting to particular stimuli with a maladaptive
excess of anxiety, it is not clear why natural selection would not then simply favor a
reduction in the affective response, rather than construct an elaborate separate
psychological system to compensate for the excessive anxiety. In fact, in contrast to
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TMT’s antiquated premise that anxiety constitutes an obstacle to effective behavior, a
large and growing body of work indicates that human affective systems are well
designed to prompt appropriate behavior in the face of adaptive challenges likely to
have confronted our hunter-gatherer ancestors (Cosmides and Tooby, 2002; Curtis
and Biran, 2001; Frank, 2001; Kirkpatrick, Waugh, Valencia, and Webster, 2002).

Anxiety reducing properties of worldviews

Terror management theory offers a philosophically sophisticated version of
the common intuition that worldviews (particularly religious ones) provide a
psychological defense against fear of death and the unknown. According to this
account, worldviews provide a stable belief system, giving individuals a sense of
permanence and security that allows them to live with relative equanimity despite the
inevitable ultimate annihilation of the self. Worldviews provide standards and
rewards such that the individual can achieve literal or figurative immortality by living
up to the norms and values of the local culture (Greenberg et al., 1997). While these
observations seem commonsensical to Western readers, a consideration of the range
of variation of human cultures casts doubt on the claim that all worldviews function
in this manner. The ethnographic and historical corpora reveal that worldviews are as
likely to be terror-inducing as anxiety-reducing. The anthropological record is replete
with examples of belief systems in which misfortune is thought to befall individuals
through no fault of their own, capricious supernatural entities murder children, crops
fail because of witchcraft, the “evil eye” of envy causes catastrophe to befall
successful people, and so on. For example, the Fang people of Gabon believe that an
internal bodily organ can launch attacks against other people, drink their blood, and
bring illness, harm or even death to the victims (Boyer, 2001), while life among the
Azande of the Sudan has been described as rife with paranoia, fear, and suspicion due
to a worldview saturated with witchcraft beliefs (Evans-Pritchard, 1937). In each of
these and numerous other cases, pain, suffering, and death rain down upon people
regardless of whether or not they live up to the standards of the given cultural
worldview.
Although ethnographic descriptions of the belief systems of small-scale
traditional societies contain innumerable cases indicating that worldviews are at least
as likely to be anxiety-promoting as anxiety-reducing, one need not look to such
exotic examples to illustrate this point. Protestant evangelists in the Calvinist tradition
have long emphasized the doctrine that humanity is naturally depraved, and is headed
for an eternity in torment, save for the few “elect” whom God has called; for the true
Calvinist, one can never know whether one has been so selected, and no degree of
virtue will save those who have not. Catholic Christianity is equally ambiguous as to
the assurance of a secure afterlife, arguing that even believers can never know if they
are eternally secure until judgment day. According to the New Testament, even Jesus
Christ, rather than exclusively providing comfort to his followers, taught: “Many will
say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy
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name have cast out devils? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then
will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me” (Matthew 7:22-3, King
James Bible).
Far from being a secure buffer against existential anxiety, worldviews raise as
many questions as they answer, and often do not paint a rosy picture of the future,
even for those that follow the rules. This is true for both religious and secular
worldviews, as secular worldviews such as those held by many in the peace or
environmental movements can be every bit as apocalyptic and anxiety-producing as
fundamentalist views. Many anthropologists have long been suspicious of the notion
that worldviews buffer anxiety, and instead argue that belief systems often bring
tension and stress into everyday life, since not only do the living need to be attended
to and appeased, but also the dead (Boyer, 2001). The TMT perspective on belief
systems is one developed in the context of a 20th Century post-war milieu where
ideological beliefs of the White North American middle class have become sanitized,
egoistic, and much more comforting than was true in the past, or is true in most
cultures outside of the U.S. today. Because TMT does not attend to the belief systems
of non-Western societies, nor does it accurately characterize most Western belief
systems when viewed in historical context, it provides a limited and profoundly
ethnocentric approach to the function of worldviews. A North American Christian
worldview of the late 20th Century is hardly an appropriate prototype in any theory
that aims to describe a phenomenon which is purportedly ubiquitous across the
panoply of cultures past and present.

A Coalitional Psychological Perspective

Worldview Defense and the Social Cognition of Coalitional Alliances

In developing an alternative to TMT, we connect a classical social science
view of the function of ingroup ideologies with recent evolutionary game-theoretic
perspectives. We begin with the recognition that coalitions and alliances are
important features of social life among humans and other animals. The ability to form
coalitions to meet adaptive challenges has been documented across diverse taxa and
has been particularly important development in the evolution of primate social
behavior (see De Waal and Harcourt, 1992). Human societies have elaborated on this
basic feature of primate life in that the ability to coordinate behavior has been
developed to a level of complexity and efficiency unparalleled in the non-human
animal world (Boyd and Richerson, 1990).
Unlike eusocial animals, much of our abilities in hyper-sociality do not lie in
kin-related altruism, but is due to the unique human abilities for imitation,
internalization of and conformity to social norms—processes crucial for individual
adaptive coordination within groups (Boyd and Richerson, 1985; Gintis, Bowles,
Boyd, and Fehr, 2003; Hallowell, 1956, 1963; Sherif, 1936/1966). Conformity to
social norms, including embodying the attitudes, values, and life-ways of the ingroup,
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enhances the efficiency of coordinated action among self-interested actors
(McElreath, Boyd, and Richerson, 2003). In addition to their sometimes complex
cosmologies, cultural belief systems contain norms that address conflict resolution
and resource distribution, as well as marriage rules, stereotypes, delineated power
relationships, and group membership criteria that define who does or does not belong
(van Dijk, 1998). Such guidelines are undoubtedly crucial for solving a variety of
adaptive problems that confront people in every society.1
Muzafer Sherif (1936) recognized that all groups develop life-ways with
characteristic beliefs, standards, strategies and even “enemies” in order to coordinate
social life. Hence, if individuals are to function effectively in the ingroup, they must
hold the ideological schemas containing the preferences and attitudes towards friends
and enemies of the ingroup. Attitude formation thus comes not as nonintegrated
declarative truisms, but rather is “functionally related to becoming a group member—
to adopting the group and its values (norms) as the main anchorage for regulating
experience and behavior” (Sherif and Sherif, 1953, p. 251).
As Hardin and Conley (2001) note, Solomon Asch also recognized that
adaptive human understanding is predicated on social transmission and shared
experience. Like Sherif, he understood the importance of the function of socially
shared beliefs, and emphasized the role of such beliefs, even when ethnocentric and
prejudiced, in negotiating social relationships:

That attitudes have such social roots and implications has
consequences for their cognitive and emotional functioning, for the
conditions of their growth and change. Their content and their
persistence and change must be seen as an expression of the need to
maintain viable group relations. Only in this way can we fully
understand the pull of social conditions in the formation and
modification of attitudes and the fact that they vary lawfully with
group membership…For a Southerner to deny the prevailing views
about Negroes requires a drastic intellectual reorientation and a serious
snapping of social bonds. It would be tantamount to questioning the
perceptions and cherished values of those nearest to him and casting
himself out of the group (Asch [1950] quoted in Hardin and Conley,
2001).

Intimations of these early insights are resonant in recent research on the social
cognition of intergroup relations (e.g. Haines and Jost, 2000; Hewstone and Lord,
1998; Lyons and Kashima, 2003). One of the important ways in which people can
create or enhance interpersonal connections is through the affirmation of a perceived
achievement of mutual understanding and common values, or what some have termed
a shared reality with relevant others (Hardin and Higgins, 1996). As beings
motivated to affiliate with and seek acceptance from others, people tend to present
themselves in ways they believe will lead others to respect and like them (Baumeister
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Document Outline

• Evolutionary Psychology
  • • Terror Management Theory
    • The function of anxiety reduction
      • A Coalitional Psychological Perspective
      • Worldview Defense and the Social Cognition of Coalitional Alliances
    • Supporting Evidence
    • Conclusion
    • References

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