Interview with Sheldon Solomon (professor/psychologist)
Sheldon Solomon is a professor of psychology at Skidmore College and studies how death anxiety and death reminders influence our behaviour. He’s also one of the founders of Terror Management Theory (TMT), which posits that death anxiety is what drives humans to search for meaning and value in themselves (self-esteem) and in the world (cultural/religious worldviews). If you haven’t already, check out my review of his book The Worm at the Core, and also my review of Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, the work that set the stage for TMT.
My impression after reading The Worm at the Core is that you and your colleagues approach religion and supernatural belief with an analytic eye. Would you describe yourself as an agnostic atheist?
Absolutely.
I’m fascinated with Becker’s (and Kierkegaard’s) recommendation that we should align ourselves with a supernatural belief system, not because religion is true but because it’s necessary. Do you think Becker is right that religion is the most fulfilling kind of immortality project?
Maybe!
Becker makes two points in this regard. First is the notion that religion is the most fulfilling kind of immortality project. Becker steadfastly regarded religious worldviews more highly than secular belief systems and insisted that religious beliefs offer the broadest, deepest, and most durable foundation for personal and interpersonal equanimity and prosperity. I’m not sure if I agree with Becker here, especially after reading Heidegger for the first time a few years ago. I like Heidegger’s account of how one could in principle come to terms with death and overcome existential guilt without a leap of faith in god; rather, an authentic individual has faith (although Heidegger does not use this term) in life. More specifically, Heidegger describes an authentic existence in terms of anticipatory resoluteness (looking forward in an admirably determined fashion) for a life perceived as an ongoing adventure, perfused with unshakeable joy.
The second point Becker makes is that all cultural worldviews are ultimately religious, and I do concur with this notion. Although secular worldviews have no explicit religious or spiritual basis, they are nevertheless, according to Becker, “mythical hero-system(s) in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning.” In his book Heresies, John Gray offered: “For many, the promises of religion lack credibility; but the fear that inspires them has not gone away… Secular societies believe they have left religion behind, when all they have done is substitute one set of myths for another.”
Becker also said that to feel stable and secure we need to believe we have universal meaning and are universally significant. What do you think are the consequences if you don’t believe this is true, if you’re an absurdist or nihilist?
Absurdism and nihilism are death-denying worldviews (albeit shallow), generally unfulfilling, and with the potential to be destructively anti-social. In one recent study, for example, atheists who were shown archeological evidence suggesting that Jesus may actually have existed had increased levels of implicit (i.e. non-conscious) death thoughts – just like Christian fundamentalists who were shown passages in the Bible that are logically inconsistent.
Is it possible to consciously/deliberately choose an immortality project or worldview? I’m thinking of Becker’s point that we all need “life-enhancing illusions” and wondering if you can ever choose your own illusions (or if they get their power from existing below the awareness).
Great query! Let me know when/if you figure this one out. My guess (and hope) is that there is a sweet spot of sorts where one can contribute consciously/deliberately to constructing an immortality project or worldview while at the same time remaining thoroughly immersed in it and enchanted by it.
If in-group/out-group thinking is amplified by death anxiety, do you think facing our fear of death can make us better people (more welcoming, accepting, cohesive, etc.)? Is there any research that suggests this is true?
In principle this should make people less “assholic” when reminded of death – but there is not direct research to my knowledge in this domain.
How can we extend our ‘in-group’ and our worldviews to include all of humanity? How do we encourage these perspectives to take psychological hold?
— Sheldon directs me to a paper which found that subtly priming people to think of human experiences shared by people from diverse cultures both increased perceived similarity between groups and reduced mortality salience-induced negativity toward out-groups. Check it out here.
Taking the cue from this research, focusing on and contemplating widely shared human experiences (i.e. how we’re the same) folds humanity into your ‘in-group’ and reduces out-group negativity. —
Could you talk a little about gratitude and humility, and how they buffer death anxiety? (To me it seems that becoming more grateful and more humble are aspirational goals and superior to the more superficial or materialistic foundations of self-esteem).
As you noted, gratitude (giving thanks) and humility (giving praise) are superior to self-esteem as existential anxiety buffers because they are aspirational rather than zero-sum efforts to be better than others. Specifically, asking people to think about something they are grateful for or to be humble (not self-deprecating) diminishes or eliminates defensive reactions to mortality salience.
— Sheldon links to this article for a fleshed out portrait of how humility quiets death anxiety, and to another article for more thoughts on death and gratitude here. In short, anything that “unselves” you, that allows you to transcend egotistical concerns and feel part of something larger than yourself, can buffer death anxiety. —
What is experimental existential psychology and what is existential psychotherapy?
Experimental existential psychology is a branch of academic psychology devoted to using experimental methods to explore existential phenomena. Existential psychotherapy uses existential constructs in therapeutic settings; specifically, according to Irvin Yalom (Existential Psychotherapy, 1980) and Rollo May (The Cry for Myth, 1991) there are four basic universal existential concerns: death, freedom and responsibility, isolation, and meaninglessness – that always arise (to varying degrees) when people are having psychological difficulties.
If you lived another 100 years what other subject areas or compliments to terror management theory would you be interested in studying (if you weren’t too tired)?
I would want to devote a century or two to figuring out how to undo the more pernicious defensive reactions to death reminders.
Has studying death anxiety alleviated or exacerbated any of your fears?
Both. In some ways studying death anxiety for forty years has helped me avoid direct confrontations with my own disinclination to die by intellectualizing the exercise. On the other hand, I would like to think that I’m getting to the point where I can accept my death with the same grace and dignity as my parents and pets.
For more information on Sheldon Solomon, his courses, research interests, and publications, visit Skidmore College: https://www.skidmore.edu/psychology/faculty/solomon.php