Where Health and Death Intersect

Abstract

This paper offers an integrative understanding of the intersection between “health” and “death” from the perspective of the terror management health model. After highlighting the potential for health-related situations to elicit concerns about mortality, we turn to the question, how do thoughts of death influence health decision-making? Across varied health domains, the answer depends on whether these cognitions are in conscious awareness or not. When mortality concerns are conscious, people engage in healthy intentions and behavior if efficacy and coping resources are present. In contrast, when contending with accessible but non-conscious thoughts of death, health relevant decisions are guided more by esteem implications of the behavior. Lastly, we present research suggesting how these processes can be leveraged to facilitate health promotion and reduce health risk

Encouraging COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Through Effective Health Communication

“…Terror Management Theory (TMT) argues that people engage in predictable psychological coping mechanisms when mortality is salient, i.e., when people are aware that death is inevitable and can happen at any time (Becker, 1973;Greenberg et al, 1986). Existing research finds that highlighting the potential for death or harm in oneself and others will push people to adopt healthier attitudes and behaviors when the trigger (in our case: COVID-19) is consciously linked with the threat of death or bodily harm (e.g., Arndt and Goldenberg, 2017;Haglin et al, 2019).…”

Psychology Students' Perceptions of COVID-19 in a Death Education Course

“…The greater awareness of the terror of death and the resulting defensive dynamics help people face the difficulties that arise from mortal situations and help others relate to people who are suffering from a personal loss (12). Moreover, literature has also shown that reflecting on death and human vulnerability can also help to reduce anxiety and to better manage information related to the preservation of one's health (13). For example, a qualitative study of community death education in which participants were offered a death education course and were later asked to imagine they were affected by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and had to prepare their Advanced Treatment Directives (ATDs) highlighted how reflecting upon the themes of the knowledge of having to die, palliative care and ATDs significantly helped participants to think to their death in a less distressful way and to be able to plan their future healthcare treatments and fundamental desires with less anxiety (14).…”

Evolved health psychology

“…To illustrate this meta-theoretical application of evolutionary psychology, consider the terror management approach to health motivation (Arndt & Goldenberg, 2017;Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008). This model proposes that many health behaviors are motivated by existential anxieties, an assumption that is critically tied to a consideration of evolution theory.…”

“…Specifically, the model maintains that 'the fear of death itself ultimately serves the instinct for self-preservation, […] a very basic and primitive psychological adaptation that functions to perpetuate the organism's genes' (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997, p. 5). According to Arndt and Goldenberg (2017) the terror management health model 'offers a foundation for understanding how people manage existential insecurity as well as harnessing the effects of death-related thought to engage productive health behavior change' (Arndt & Goldenberg, 2017, p. 130).…”

“…The assumption that people can reasonably be expected to pursue and invest in health goals, i.e.to expect that all individuals possess a general health motivation, is implicitly and explicitly present across health behavior theories. The Terror Management Health Model (Arndt & Goldenberg, 2017;Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008) is one example of a theory making such an assumption explicit; it postulates a general instinct for self-preservation to be a central human motivation. This assumption is also implicit to reasoning in models such as the Health Belief Model (Janz & Becker, 1984;Stretcher & Rosenstock, 1997) and Protection Motivation Theory (Floyd et al, 2000;Rogers & Prentice-Dunn, 1997).…”