Approaching Relief: Compensatory Ideals Relieve Threat-Induced Anxiety by Promoting Approach-Motivated States

Abstract

We propose that in anxious circumstances people are drawn toward idealistic meanings and purposes because ideals efficiently and reliably engage approach motivated states. We present evidence that approach motivation and anxiety are inversely related; that approach motivation and anxiety are positively and negatively associated with meaning in life, respectively; and that ideals are more reliable vehicles than concrete goals for sustaining meaning, approach motivation, and relief from anxiety. We suggest that various threats arouse anxiety because they generate goal conflict, review evidence for a reactive approach-motivation (raM) interpretation of idealistic and worldview defense (nash, McGregor, & Prentice, 2011), and integrate consistency, terror management, self-affirmation, and attachmentrelated theories of threat and compensatory defense from a raM theory perspective. We conclude with a raM account for why compensatory defenses tend to be idealistically conservative, group-based, and religious, and how they can be either antisocial or prosocial.

Threat and Defense

“…For example, writing about love of chocolate (concrete personal) and relationship hand-holding (concrete social) decrease ERN amplitude in threatening circumstances (Coan et al, 2006;McGregor, Prentice, & Nash, 2013b), and writing about personal worth or values (abstract personal) or group, ideological, or religious commitments (abstract social) relieve anxious thoughts, cortisol reactions, and ERN amplitude after threats and experimentally engineered conflicts (Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010;Koole, Smeets, Van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 1999;McGregor, 2006b;McGregor et al, 2005, Study 4; see also Inzlicht et al, 2009, for evidence that trait levels of religious zeal and belief in God are negatively related to the ERN). In two recent studies among people preselected for their love of God (an abstract incentive) and love of chocolate (a concrete incentive), participants who were randomly assigned to write about their love of God had lower subsequent self-reported anxiety and ERN amplitude than those who wrote about their love of chocolate (McGregor, Prentice, & Nash, 2013b). These findings provide some support for our view that abstraction may be a particularly powerful antidote to BIS anxiety.…”

Romantic relationships as shared reality defense

“…For people to engage in goal-directed action, life needs to make sense, with events unfolding as expected. However, life rarely unfolds just as people expect [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8].…”

Motivation for aggressive religious radicalization: goal regulation theory and a personality × threat × affordance hypothesis

“…These repression-related views were first put into goal-regulation language by Lewin’s (1933 , 1935 ) understanding of how strong goals and commitments can clear away other conflicts, leaving people feeling sanguine and single-minded (reviewed in McGregor, 2003 ). Lewin (1933 , p. 609) paved the way for a goal-regulation view of zealous religious devotion as an idealistic commitment that can function like a motivational “field of force” to push other uncertainties and frustrations out of awareness (see McGregor et al, 2010b , 2012b , for elaboration on the goal and emotion-regulation function of ideals). Contemporary social psychological and social neuroscience research now provides a clearer, less metaphorical understanding of the basic motivational mechanics beneath Lewin’s seminal goal-regulation ideas.…”