information, there may nonetheless be an inconsistency between the relevant attitudes and the behaviors observed. Many health communication studies have demonstrated the relatively small, or even negative effects of information on stimulating productive behavior change, even though participants report positive attitudes toward the health-relevant information and/or high intentions to perform the advocated behavior (Claudy et al., 2011; Grandpre et al., 2003; Miller et al., 2013). From the perspective of TMT, a defensive response in the form of information rejection may often constitute a type of proximal defense aimed at forestalling the advent of existential anxiety (Pyszczynski et al., 1999). As TMT posits, in terms of CWV bolstering and ingroup tolerance, individuals may also respond positively when death thoughts are in focal awareness. Therefore, the observed positive responses in studies (e.g., positive attitudes and/or high intentions to behave as recommended) likely represent proximal defenses aimed at shielding the physical self from DTA. However, to buffer their existential anxiety as thoughts of death move out of focal awareness, where they are less consciously accessible, people will tend to engage in more negative, discordant CWV bolstering behaviors associated with distal terror management defenses.
Fortunately, as Goldenberg and Arndt (2008) and Greenberg and Arndt (2011) have shown, such undesirable distal defenses may be moderated or eliminated by cultivating a worldview where health promotion and prosocial behavior are highly valued. When promoting healthful, socially beneficial behavior constitutes a core component of one’s CWV, efforts toward worldview defense function to reinforce adaptive behavior and reduce negative outcomes. Along similar lines, finding pathways to self-esteem associated with adaptive behavior in response to DTA associated with the COVID-19 pandemic can also serve to maximize positive outcomes, encourage greater engagement in health-promoting social behavior, and foster a healthier, socially harmonious lifestyle. As Yum and Schenck-Hamlin (2005) found, two weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there was an upsurge in altruistic activities, with many people reporting that they were spending more time involved in interpersonal conversations regarding the wellbeing of their neighbors, and in community conscious behaviors in general. During the coronavirus pandemic, when chances for effective interpersonal connections with others is limited by quarantining and the need for social distance, seeking interpersonal connections through online social support groups and/or via social media interaction may help people relieve stress, reduce anxiety, and help individuals maintain overall mental health (Ma & Miller, 2020).
These and other related studies within the TMT literature (Hirschberger et al., 2008; Van Tongeren et al., 2013; Wade-Benzoni, 2006) demonstrate a “silver lining” that can often offset the increased existential anxiety that follows in the wake of traumatic events. In line with much of the social support literature (Moscardino et al., 2010; Mossakowski & Zhang, 2014; Pow et al., 2017) when it comes to building resilience and facilitating recovery from disastrous events, these findings provide valuable implications for ameliorating potential mental health issues following crises, disasters, and traumas. As research in disaster and crisis management has shown, mental health concerns such as post-disaster trauma, functional impairment, and socioemotional stress often occur in the aftermath of crises, affecting many aspects of communal well-being, and social and individual development (Beaton et al., 2009; Kaniasty, 2020). Moreover, as mentioned above, in conjunction with CWV and self-esteem bolstering, investing in close personal relationships can also serve as an especially effective means of restoring and maintaining social and psychological equanimity.
Death Anxiety and COVID-19
Psychological mechanisms for providing socioemotional equanimity are especially important during the calamity caused by a major pandemic, when, given the need for physical isolation and social distancing, people are likely to be under greater stress while at the same time enjoying comparatively fewer chances to socialize or seek communal support. With the initiation and cultivation of personal relationships becoming more difficult to effect and maintain, their utility as efficient buffers against existential anxiety is greatly diminished right when they are needed the most—in response to the high levels of uncertainty, insecurity, and dread produced by the ongoing pandemic made salient by continuing coverage in the news. Moreover, the intense coverage of the spread of COVID-19, and the thousands of confirmed cases and mortalities announced each day is making the prospect of death ubiquitously and unavoidably salient on an international scale.
From an evolutionary perspective, threats of pathogens and diseases may stimulate existential anxiety since they are likely to prompt thoughts of mortality in opposition to the fundamental motive—self-preservation. Consequently, when faced with the specter of death made salient on a continuing basis by the coronavirus pandemic, TMT predicts individuals will turn to the utility of their CWV, self-esteem, and, when available, their close personal relationships to buffer the resulting anxiety. Indeed, extant research has shown how thinking about a virus outbreak—such as the Ebola epidemic (Arrowood et al., 2017) or the H1N1 pandemic (Bélanger et al., 2013)—has the same effect as a standard MS prime operationalized in the lab. In both cases, death thoughts become highly accessible, stimulating proximal and distal defensive behaviors that may often end in outgroup derogation, intolerance, and hostility toward dissimilar others.
Given the highly polarized nature of the political landscape in place even before the coronavirus pandemic began taking thousands of lives within the United States, TMT provides a clear explanation for much of the intolerance, hostility, political grandstanding, scapegoating, dissimilation, and deception engaged in by many political leaders, including the president of the United States, who has contributed to the problem by exacerbating an ongoing “infodemic” (WHO, 2020). Moreover, the coronavirus infodemic functions to further magnify the destructiveness of the COVID-19 pandemic by disseminating erroneous information giving rise to misunderstandings, interpretative mistakes, medically unsound and inaccurate statements, proliferation of supper spreader events (Aschwanden, 2020), fake news, conspiracy theories, and even antisemitism and racism, among other deleterious outcomes (Evanega et al., 2020; WHO, 2020). President Donald Trump, who was recently empirically demonstrated to be the single leading driver of misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic (Evanega et al., 2020), has not only been accused of failing to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus but also of hampering efforts to curtail the deadly nature of the pandemic by actively playing a major role as a key “amplifier” (WHO, 2020), hindering efforts to deploy the best means of preventing its spread and continued destructiveness.
As Landau et al. (2004) and other TMT researchers have demonstrated, rather than a more rational consideration of the governance and leadership qualities possessed by political leaders, the public’s attraction to them is largely a function of the emotional and symbolic protection afforded by how such leaders are perceived. As it relates to the coronavirus pandemic, TMT research has shown how everyday stimuli, such as newspapers, television news, and social media can adversely affect people’s social interactions and negatively bias a range of outcome responses (Das et al., 2009; Landau et al., 2004; Massey & Johnson, 2018). Considering the recent widening in the polarization of ideological assumptions and practices associated with quarantining, mask-wearing, and social distancing, it should be no surprise how more negative outgroup perceptions, source credibility assessments, and personal and public health behaviors have come to aggravate and stymie efforts to contain and eliminate the spread of COVID-19.
As dozens of TMT studies have shown, elevated DTA motivates biased processing, such that, although people may show increased favoritism and tolerance toward those providing consensus for their own worldview, individuals will correspondingly exhibit greater hostility toward those threatening or merely holding a different worldview. What’s more, beyond attempting to derogate competing worldviews, such as can be observed when competing ideological positions encourage opposing responses to the coronavirus pandemic, anyone attempting to proclaim or publicize a compelling alternative approach to confronting the pandemic can not only undermine the legitimacy one’s own responses to the threat, but also, according to TMT, threaten one’s own overarching belief system, the basis of which acts as a vital buffer against the anxiety generated by death thoughts made salient by the pandemic.
As TMT posits, in such cases—when one’s own CWV is threatened by the mere existence of a competing CWV—individuals may often be motivated to engage in a defensive strategy called