Cognitive Dissonance: A Motivator Of Stupid Decisions

Prepared by Dan Eden for viewzone.com (http://viewzone.com/cognitivedissonance.html)

When "Robbie" the robot was told to shoot a weapon at a man in the movie Forbidden Planet, his electronic brain sparked and short-circuited. His creator had programmed him to never harm a human and so the conflicting ideas paralyzed him.

Human beings often are presented with opposing thoughts also, but our brains have developed a way of resolving these conflicts through a process call cognitive dissonance.

We are taught, like "Robbie," that killing is prohibited -- but what about war? And many anti-abortionists support the death penalty... conflicting behavior is all around us. So how exactly does that work?

Simply put, congitive dissonance theory states that when you have two opposing ideas (or ideologies) at the same time, you will act upon the one that causes the less distortion to your ego.

According to Wikipedia:Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology. Dissonance normally occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency among his or her cognitions. This happens when one idea implies the opposite of another. For example, a belief in animal rights could be interpreted as inconsistent with eating meat or wearing fur. Noticing the contradiction would lead to dissonance, which could be experienced as anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment, stress, and other negative emotional states. When people's ideas are consistent with each other, they are in a state of harmony or consonance. If cognitions are unrelated, they are categorized as irrelevant to each other and do not lead to dissonance.

Let me give you some examples.

There are lots of schemes and con-artists trying to get your money these days. Almost every day I receive dozens of e-mails from people like Abada Muzoola from Nigeria, who just happened to get my e-mail address and wants me to help him transfer 70-million dollars to my bank in return for a 10 percent commission. Wow, I could use 7-million dollars! All he needs is my bank account number and pin-code. He is even willing to transfer the total amount to my account because he trusts me so much.

I continue to receive variations of this scheme every day. Why? Because they work. Somewhere in the world is a victim who will have cognitive dissonance.

On a more sophisticated scale, Bernie Madoff [ right] bilked hundreds of wealthy people out of an estimated 50-billion dollars by manipulating the same mental process (and would have continued doing so had he not bragged to his sons, who turned him in).

So how is it that people are able to convince others to give them access to their funds or to willingly give them their cash? First, one more example:

You're walking down a busy street deep in your own private thoughts. All of a sudden a smiling woman jumps out of somewhere, stands in front of you, and puts a flower in your hand. "Hello dear... isn't it a wonderful day today? I want you to have this flower!," she says.Now you have a beautiful flower in your hand. It's a nice gift and she seems friendly. She begins to walk with you, telling you that you have nice, kind eyes. She says she noticed right away that you were special and so wanted to meet you. You forget your previous thoughts about work, bills or your own life. Suddenly you feel good... appreciated... uplifted. 

Then, in the same friendly voice and bright smile, she says, "I know you are a good person and you can help me by giving me a something for the beautiful flower -- right?"

What happens inside your head at that moment is cognitive dissonance.

The dissonance or dis-harmony comes from two conflicting ideas or decision paths. One path tells you that you should just say "No thanks!" and keep on walking; maybe return the flower and feel insulted even if it means she will become disappointed with you. The other path tells you that she has made you feel good and has earned your friendship and a couple of bucks. She has been friendly and you don't want to ruin the brief relationship you have formed. Heck, you should probably even give her back the flower so she can use it on the next victim.

Which decision will cause the least damage to your ego?

In cognitive dissonance theory the outcome of these opposing thought paths will be the one that requires the least emotional stress. Most victims will pay up rather than feel they are being cruel or disrespectful to someone who has made them feel so good.

In the case of the Nigerian philanthropist, Abada Muzoola, it is often less stressful to believe that you are the lucky "chosen" beneficiary than to believe you are one of the thousands of e-mails he has sent this offer to.

Later, after their bank account has been cleaned out, most people realize that they should have known better and are puzzled by their own vulnerability. Many feel so embarassed that they don't report the crime to the authorities.

Psychologists refer to this vulnerability as the "willful suspension of disbelief," where one can easily see the potential manipulations and evil motives of ther perpetrator, but, because they have already made some prior committment to go along with this, it is easier to continue than to back out.

The investors of Mr. Madoff knew that a 10% to 12% annual return on an investment, especially in the current bear market, was impossible. Something dishonest or illegal had to be going on. But because they had been made to work so hard to let him take their money -- often begging him to please allow them to invest millions of dollars -- they had made the psychological investment that "locks in" the cognitive dissonance. After that, it was more stressful to admit that this was a ponzy scheme than to just avoid worrying about it.

In Festinger and Carlsmith's classic 1959 experiment, students were asked to perform boring and tedious tasks (e.g. turning pegs a quarter turn, over and over again). The tasks were designed to generate a strong, negative attitude. After an hour of working on the tasks, participants were asked to persuade another subject (who was actually a confederate) that the dull, boring tasks the subject had just completed were actually interesting and engaging. Some participants were paid $20 for the favor, another group was paid $1, and a control group was not asked to perform the favor.

When asked to rate the boring tasks at the conclusion of the study, those in the $1 group rated them more positively than those in the $20 and control groups. This was explained by Festinger and Carlsmith as evidence for cognitive dissonance. The researchers theorized that people experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions, "I told someone that the task was interesting", and "I actually found it boring." When paid only $1, students were forced to internalize the attitude they were induced to express, because they had no other justification. Those in the $20 condition, however, had an obvious external justification for their behavior, and thus experienced less dissonance.

Are you beginning to understand how this works now?

In for a dime, in for a dollar

Cognitive dissonance has been used to control larger groups and populations also. In World War II there was a famous campaign where citizens were asked to donate all their old pots and pans, supposedly to be melted down to make tanks, munitions and war planes. The collection was highly effective and the psychological "investment" initiated solidarity and nationalism for the war effort. Of course, all those pots and pans ended up buried in landfills.

Here's a modern day example: When the US invaded Afghanistan, ex-President Bush came on the television asking families to donate whatever they could to help the school children in Afghanistan who needed paper and pencils. Thousands of school kids collected coins in classrooms across the nation and sent the donations to the White House. The funds ended up being put in to some vague account that never did what it was donated to do. But the "investment" was enough to gain support for a far-away war in an obscure land for vague reasons.

Sometimes, as with the tragic collapse of the World Trade towers on 9-11, the "investment" is made for us. In this way an entire nation can be made to feel that they have already sacrificed something and that they should choose the path of war over peace forgetting about the Iraqi civilian casualties -- or even that Iraq was not responsible.

I once belonged to an Episcopal church in New Mexico that collected oil for M-16s to send to the troops in Iraq! They also invested the church funds with Raytheon and Haliburton.

Cognitive Dissonance in Advertising and Marketing

In advertising there is a theory that a consumer may use a particular product because he or she believes the advertising for that product, which claims that the product is the most effective of its kind in the job that it does.

Then the consumer may see a competitor's advertisement that seems to prove conclusively that this competitive product is better. This creates dissonance. The consumer must now relieve the uncomfortable feeling that the dissonance brings about and will often do so by switching products. The theory acts as a double-edged sword, though, because while advertisers want to create dissonance for nonusers of their product, they do not want to create it for those who do use their product.

This is why advertisers use their logos on things like NASCAR and sports arenas. They want you to become loyal to their brand. This will create distrust when you see the same product -- even an apparently better product -- with a different and unfamiliar brand.

Cognitive dissonance most often occurs after the purchase of an expensive item such as an automobile. A consumer who is experiencing cognitive dissonance after his or her purchase may attempt to return the product or may seek positive information about it to justify the choice. If the buyer is unable to justify the purchase, he or she will also be less likely to purchase that brand again. Advertisers of high-priced durable goods say that half of their advertising is done to reassure consumers that in purchasing their product the right choice was made.

Some good uses of cognitive dissonance

Congitive therapists use this technique to change bad behavior and decisions. The technique is called a "yes set."

Getting a patient to agree to treatment for addiction or to initiate some beneficial behavior is difficult. There is often a fundamental "batting of heads" between the patient and people trying to help. The breakthrough is achieved when the therapist purposely initiates a series of statements to which the patient can agree. After repeatedly agreeing with the therapist on a multitude of minor decisions, the patient begins to feel good and the therapist allows the patient to "invest" in this positive relationship. Then, with skill, the therapist introduces the crucial decision. "So don't you think it's really time for you go to rehab?" Faced with the option of agreeing or offending the therapist, the patient often continues the "yes" response.

The example above is highly effective because the patient not only agrees to change the bad behavior but is immediately rewarded by the continuation of their positive self-esteem and good feeling.

Cognitive dissonance requires some skill to work

The concept doesn't always work. Especially if it's poorly executed.

I was once shopping for a car and, after selecting a possible make and model, found myself sitting in the little room with the salesman, haggling about the price. At one point he asked me for my driver's license or credit card and told me it was a "gesture" so that I would trust him. At the time, I just said "No way," and split.

For many customers, this simple act would be enough to form a psychological "investment" with the dealer, who could then use this to manipulate and close the sale. It might be more difficult for the customer to demand his lecense or credit card and storm out of the office than to sit there and be intimidated until they signed the sales contract.

Eliminating Cognitive Dissonance

(from www.beyondintractability.org)

There are several key ways in which people attempt to overcome, or do away with, cognitive dissonance. One is by ignoring or eliminating the dissonant cognitions. By pretending that ice cream is not bad for me, I can have my cake and eat it too, so to speak. Ignoring the dissonant cognition allows us to do things we might otherwise view as wrong or inappropriate.

Another way to overcome cognitive dissonance is to alter the importance (or lack thereof) of certain cognitions. By either deciding that ice cream is extremely good (I can't do without it) or that losing weight isn't that important (I look good anyway), the problem of dissonance can be lessened. If one of the dissonant cognitions outweighs the other in importance, the mind has less difficulty dealing with the dissonance -- and the result means that I can eat my ice cream and not feel bad about it.

Yet another way that people react to cognitive dissonance is byadding or creating new cognitions. By creating or emphasizing new cognitions, I can overwhelm the fact that I know ice cream is bad for my weight loss. For instance, I can emphasize new cognitions such as "I exercise three times a week" or "I need calcium and dairy products" or "I had a small dinner," etc. These new cognitions allow for the lessening of dissonance, as I now have multiple cognitions that say ice cream is okay, and only one, which says I shouldn't eat it.

Finally, perhaps the most important way people deal with cognitive dissonance is to prevent it in the first place. If someone is presented with information that is dissonant from what they already know, the easiest way to deal with this new information is to ignore it, refuse to accept it, or simply avoid that type of information in general. Thus, a new study that says ice cream is more fattening than originally thought would be easily dealt with by ignoring it. Further, future problems can be prevented by simply avoiding that type of information -- simply refusing to read studies on ice cream, health magazines, etc.

Cognitive dissonance is all around us. We live in a world full of contradictions. Children are killed in Gaza in the name of peace. Feminists wear makeup, short skirts and high heels. Conservationists like Al Gore fly around in private, fuel guzzling jets. Anti-gay Christians tap their feet in public bathroom stalls... these opposing ideologies are all resolved somehow, somewhere, deep in our human psyche with cognitive disonnance.

Terror Management Theory -- How Does Fear Of Mortality Affect You?

© 2011 by Gary Vey exclusively for Viewzone (http://viewzone.com/TMT.html) WARNING! Scientific experiments have proven that if you read the following story, you will likely be changed. Your ideas about religion, politics -- yes, even your appreciation of art and beauty will be changed... at least temporarily. So if you like the way you feel about life right now, maybe you should skip this article. I'm going to tell you something that you already know. It's something obvious. But it's also so horrific and terrible that it must quickly be forgotten or it could literally drive you insane. Just the reminder of this fact will be enough to change your behavior, your outlook on the world and the look on your face [1]. "The all encompassing blackness..." --William James 1910 I'm going to describe the cutting-edge of psychological theories, called Terror Management Theory or TMT. It's been known for a while but has been kept off the radar by the media. And that's partially because TMT has been used against us (you will see how). It's a theory that explains human behavior and its most basic psychological motivator. "In the day that you eat from it you shall surely die." --Genesis 2:17 This article started out as Part 2 of the "What is "beauty?"series. But it soon took a dark turn. I wondered, why do we appreciate beauty at all? Where does that come from? Most everyone can agree that a face of a certain proportion is beautiful, that a painting or certain place is beautiful. But in order to be beautiful, the object has to be observed and analysed by us. There is no inherent beauty in nature. It is we who give these things our "appreciation" as being beautiful. What we are reacting to is pattern, organization and symbolism. We gravitate to these qualities because they represent the opposite of entropy. Entropy is death. Order is life. This idea is so important that it deserves to be explored. It's a new-old idea called Terror Management Theory. What is TMT? Terror Management Theory (TMT) states that all human behavior is motivated by the fear of our own mortality. The fact that you and I will eventually die and be "no more" is a fact known and understood only by humans. Although animals have an avoidance of death, they live in the present. They don't comprehend their destiny. Only humans have the capacity to project reality in time and imagine the future. Only humans realize the significance of being "no more". The theory originated with anthropologist Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction, The Denial of Death, in which Becker argues all human action is taken to ignore or avoid the anxiety generated by the inevitability of death. The terror associated with our unstoppable annihilation creates a subconscious conflict or anxiety calledcognitive dissonance. We try to cope with having to accept two contrary ideas. On one hand, we want to become involved with life and think of ourselves as a meaningful part of the world. On the other hand, what does anything matter anyway if we ultimately become "no more" -- if all this wonderment of life is temporary? According to Becker, people spend their entire lives trying to make sense of these conflicting thoughts. We are so afraid of death that we create alternate realities -- realities where we won't cease to be. We take comfort in the fact that others share this alternate reality. Often symbols are used to reinforce our confidence in what psychologists call our worldview. Psychologists speak of an event which stimulates awareness of our own death as mortality salience. Mortality salience is usually achieved in experiments by inserting questions about such things as the subjects death plans or how old his grandfather was when he died. Half get the mortality salience and half get benign questions. Other times they flash the word DEATH at one twenty-forth of a second on a screen -- so fast that the subjects cannot see it even when they're told it is there. Yet it works. TMT psychologists view human culture as a belief system constructed to explain and give meaning to life and resist confronting the horror of death. One of the requirements of a successful culture is to substitute the reality of existential death with an achievable afterlife. If not literally, then symbolically. Cemetery stones and burial monuments are examples of this. Cultures also reward enduring accomplishments to civilization with material awards, namesakes and inclusions in human history. The worldview is the foundation of human culture. History records the various symbols that have been used to represent different worldviews. Each one offers its unique explanation of how we can coexist with death and attempts to lower our death anxiety. The following research will show that when your worldview is threatened by another worldview, you will be so anxious that you will fight to defend your own belief system -- in fact, this is the basis of religious and political wars. It doesn't matter what you think consciously either. It's such a primal reaction that it happens anyway. TMT Is Being Used Against Us! When the idea was first introduced to psychology, a plethora of research was conducted with the idea of "Tell me it ain't so!" But multiple experiments have shown that TMT is able to predict and explain most of the behavior we both promote and experience. TMT theorists believe that an individual will be so freaked out by being reminded of his death, or mortality salience, that he will invest more belief in his worldview and resist or even attack anything perceived as a threat to his worldview. But how do you test this? Two famous experiments illustrate this phenomenon. The Judges & the Prostitute Research has shown that reminding subjects of their mortality encourages negative reactions towards others whose behaviour or attitudes deviate from the subject's cultural worldview [8]. According to TMT, these findings result from a heightened need for faith in the cultural worldview that is activated by reminders of one's mortality. In this first study, a group of judges were asked to participate in answering a questionaire. The judges were divided into two groups. Each group was given more questions to answer but one group had subtle reminders of death contained in the questions. Both groups were then asked to review the case history of a hypothetical prostitute and to suggest a bail bond amount in dollars. Not surprisingly, the group who had received the mortality salience came down harshly on the "deviate", assigning an average bond of $455, while the control group averaged only $50. But, it was argued, bad news of any kind could produce the same effect if it got the judge in a bad mood. Experimenters responded that the subjects did not report feeling any negative reaction, but they did more experiments anyway. This time they reminded one group of their death and the other group received exposure to some other worrisome concern about the future. The same results were achieved with the mortality salience as before. The group that was reminded of death charged more for bond than the group who received other worrisome ideas [9]. The interesting fact was that the group who received the worrisome ideas reported feeling negative -- not the group who were reminded of their death. [2] Thus, consistent with Terror Management Theory, mortality salience effects seem to result exclusively from thoughts of death. TMT interprets these results as the need for an individual to invest more faith and belief in their worldview when they are reminded of their mortality. Individuals will need to become more cohesive with their groups, such as religious or political affiliations. Imagine, you can be made to be conservative and conform to the status quo by being exposed to the fear of dying. Is this a good thing? Hot Sauce Laboratory experiments investigating aggressive behavior pose a problem. If the aggression is directed towards a real person there is the risk of someone being hurt or injured. Psychologists have invented numerous means of assessing aggression in indirect ways. A group of experimenters recently developed a new method for measuring aggression, specifically, the amount of hot sauce administered to a target known to dislike spicy foods [10]. In this study, the experimenters induced participants to write about either their own death (suggesting mortality salience) or a control topic, presented them with a target who either disparaged their political views or did not, and gave them the opportunity to choose the amount of hot sauce the target would have to consume. As predicted by TMT, participants who were reminded of their death allocated a particularly large amount of hot sauce to their worldview-threatening target. In additional studies, the authors found that following MS induction, if the subjects were given the opportunity to verbally express a negative attitude toward the critical target, their allocation of hot sauce decreased. These results showed that if the subjects could express their negative attitudes verbally towards their politically opposite targets, they were less likely to give them extra hot sauce (i.e. reduced aggression). This suggests that verbal degredation and acts of aggression are two alternative modes of responding to MS. [11] Back in 2004, an experiment was conducted to assess the effect of a subtle reminder of death on voting intentions for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. On the basis of Terror Management Theory it was hypothesized that a mortality salience suggestion would increase support for President George W. Bush and decrease support for Senator John Kerry. This would happen because the president represented the status quo, the worldview as we knew it. Kerry was a threat to this. In late September 2004, after receiving either a death reminder or a neutral suggestion, registered voters were asked which candidate they intended to vote for. In accord with predictions, Senator John Kerry received substantially more votes than George Bush in the control condition, but Bush was favored over Kerry following a reminder of death, suggesting that President Bush's re-election may have been facilitated by nonconscious concerns about mortality in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the anthrax attacks (which originated from a government lab) and the constant manipulation of security threat levels attributed to vaguely described "chatter" among ill-defined "enemies" of America.[3] Are similar fears being used to control us today? Death Anxiety Fuels Conservative Ideas Increased prejudice toward worldview violators has been measured in a number of experiments assessing TMT. Following death reminders, anti-gay discrimination and affective prejudice toward gay men increased significantly. This is, according to the study, because being homosexual is not perceived as part of the standard world view. Deviation is a threat to the system that helps repress the knowledge of our certain death.[7] In studies where men were exposed to a mortality salient event, they preferred a more earthy, domestic and ordinary looking woman over a sexy and seductive one. [6] Terror management research has shown that after reminders of mortality, people show greater investment in and support for groups to which they belong. In one study, subjects were presented two images of persons talking about their own race with pride. One was black and one was white. The White person expressing pride in his race was viewed by White participants as particularly racist relative to a Black person who gave a similar presentation. However, after White participants were reminded of their own mortality, they viewed the White presentation as less racist.[5] Even though the subjects were of different ancestral nationality, their identification with their own race was amplified by their reminder of their own inevitable death. Skulls and Bones in the Whiskey In my college years, we used to all read and collect Playboy magazine. We were young and so mostly we didn't pay much attention to the ads -- that is until someone pointed out that all the liquor ads seemed to have subliminal messages in them. Our favorite hobby, well maybe not our favorite, was looking for hidden images in the ice cubes. Normally, ice cubes have a montage of shadows, reflections and odd shapes. While we found occasional nude women in some of them, most seemed to portray images more suitable for Halloween. Skulls, skeletons and faces screaming in agony were the most common motifs. For years I wondered why advertisers would put such horrific images in liquor ads. How could this possibly sell whiskey or bourbon? TMT was obviously known to these ad men. Most addictions are diversions from the real horror -- the reality of our eventual demise. It seems plausible that by causing readers to experience mortality salience their death anxiety would increase to the point where... where... where did I put that drink? It's all about self-esteem As I hinted earlier, our appreciation of beauty has two tiers. First, we are hard-wired to be attracted to sexual partners by evolution. We can accurately determine good genes and fertility by our concept of what makes a beautiful person. But our appreciation of other forms of beauty seems to have origin in our preference for pattern, repetition, organization and symbolism. These are phenomenon in our environment associated with replication and growth -- signs of life. This appreciation of beauty -- esthetics -- results from our avoidance of entropy, the breakdown of order which is characteristic of our own death. Julian Jaynes, in his acclaimed work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, showed that much of what we think and do is devoid of consciousness. He gives strong examples of how we can drive a car while thinking about another time and place; talk and write without awareness of the complex process going on to produce the vocabulary. Even learning does not require consciousness -- the phenomenon of self-awareness [12]. Or, "Being conscious of the fact that you are conscious." Our recognition and reaction to mortality salience is without our conscious involvement. But something feels the "ouch!" when we get a sub-conscious reminder that we are mortal. In Jaynes' book, he credits the development of language as the prerequisite for the "inner dialog" that creates our awareness of the "I" and "Me". Language is made from metaphores. Each new concept or word is "sort of like" some other word. That's how dictionaries function. So in order to have a concept for selfhood, a "it's sort of like..." had to be available. We needed language before we could develop consciousness and selfhood. The concept of "self" is therefore not that old. Jaynes suggests it has its origins about 3000 BCE. While it is true that there are earlier texts showing language in cuneiform, these are mere ledgers, records of land boundaries and crop tallies. There is no hint of self awareness until The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems and was written just about five hundred years shy of Jaynes' assertions. Even more telling is what the epic is all about. The protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, has a close friend who shares adventures with him and unexpectedly dies. Gilgamesh becomes depressed and embarks on a journey to find "eternal life" -- the solution to death. Ultimately the poignant words addressed to Gilgamesh in the midst of his quest foreshadow the end result: "The life that you are seeking you will never find. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping." -- [13] Death anxiety targets our self-esteem. It motivates us to keep busy and attempt to seek "eternal life" symbolically through our actions. An experiment which confirmed this was conducted as follows: The subjects were 603 soldiers who first reported on the relevance of automobile driving to their self-esteem. Then half of them were exposed to various reminders of death, and the remaining to a control condition. Experimenters then tested each group in a driving simulator to assess their risk taking. The measures were either self-reported behavioral intentions of risky driving or driving speed in a car simulator. As expected, the subjects who linked their self-esteem to driving and also received death reminders took more risks in their driving than the control group. But what was happening here? Another experiment had half of the participants in each condition receiving positive feedback about their quality of driving. Presumably this would bolster their self-esteem. Findings showed that being reminded of death led to more risky driving than the control condition -- but only among individuals who perceived driving as relevant to their self-esteem. Even more significant, the introduction of positive feedback elevated self-esteem and eliminated this effect.[4] And besides self-esteem, mortality salience has one more conscious manifestation: evil. Evil & The Hero If we are conscious of ourselves, we are conscious of all that we will have to "give up" upon our death. There is tremendous anxiety over this and some of it is relieved in symbolic conquests where the real demon is substituted with lesser foes. Some of this anxiety can be exhorcize in sports or games but more often the demons are symbols of a threat to our personal and collective self-esteem. A threat to a group that reduces our death anxiety is a real threat. I suspect this motivated the cruelty of Roman gladiators, the deadly ball games of the Mayans and the demonization of Hitler and binLaden. We need enemies to reduce our own death anxiety. Terror Management Theory is really the theory of human culture and our many attempts to be conscious about "something else" -- anything but our death. That "something else" is often associated with maintaining our self-esteem. Our self-esteem improves when we receive confirmation from other people that we are meaningful and relevant in life. This counteracts the powerful anxiety that comes from our absolute surety that we will someday die and our "self" will not exist. So organizations, political parties and religions have developed to fill our need. Each offers a means to symbolically avoid non-existence. St. George's defeat of the dragon [right] is a strong symbol for the fight against death. The town had a pond, as large as a lake, where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it two sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery. It happened that the lot fell on the king's daughter, who is in some versions of the story called Sabra.[8] The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.Saint George by chance rode past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain. The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross, charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle, and he put it around the dragon's neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash. [14] Live it... or live with it The lesson of St. George and the Dragon is that we may not be able to defeat death, but we can tame it. We can make the most of our life and forget about the inevitable. Death can become a quiet and subdued creature that follows after us like a pet. Rather than triumph over death, we can learn to coexist with it. To recapitulate: Consciousness, the concept of "I" and "me", evolved only recently as a result of our development of language. With consciousness came the discovery that this "self" was mortal and would someday be "no more." The most basic motivator of human culture is to create alternate realities in which we can achieve victory over the anxiety of our recognition of eventual death. This death anxiety is repressed in normal consciousness but is fully "awake" subconsciously. It influences our behavior and thoughts, makes us appreciate order and affirm life. It creates our worldview, which we share with other humans. Different worldviews sometimes conflict, resulting in wars and aggression. When we are consciously reminded of our mortality, we invest more belief in our own worldview. We attempt to have victory over our environment, our bodies and even our instincts as a means to separate ourselves from the natural, animalistic creatures in the hope that we are something more permanent and worthy of immortality. This drive to symbolically overcome death is the primary driver of human culture and influences what we like and dislike, what is beautiful and ugly, and what is good and evil. For anyone who came to this article by way of What Is Beauty?: I was going to write about the golden rectangle and why human vision seems to prefer a certain ratio of dimensions. After reading about the TMT, I was impressed and had to share it. Another theory that deserves more attention is the Bicameral Mind. I've only referenced it in this article but I will explore this theory in the next of this series on viewzone. It's always good to hear from you. Write your thoughts about the article. Notes: [1] "Traces of Terror: Subliminal Death Primes and Facial Electromyographic Indices of Affect", Jamie Arndt, John J. B. Allen and Jeff Greenberg, Motivation and Emotion, 2001, Volume 25, Number 3, Pages 253-277[2] Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Harmon-Jones, E., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T. and Lyon, D. (1995), "Testing alternative explanations for mortality salience effects: Terror management, value accessibility, or worrisome thoughts?" European Journal of Social Psychology, 25: 417-433. [3] "Age-related differences in responses to thoughts of one's own death: Mortality salience and judgments of moral transgressions", Maxfield, Molly; Pyszczynski, Tom; Kluck, Benjamin; Cox, Cathy R.; Greenberg, Jeff; Solomon, Sheldon; Weise, David, Psychology and Aging, Vol 22(2), Jun 2007, 341-353. [4] The impact of mortality salience on reckless driving: A test of terror management mechanisms. Ben-Ari, Orit Taubman; Florian, Victor; Mikulincer, Mario Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 76(1), Jan 1999, 35-45. [5] "The siren's call: Terror management and the threat of men's sexual attraction to women", Landau, Mark J.; Goldenberg, Jamie L.; Greenberg, Jeff; Gillath, Omri; Solomon, Sheldon; Cox, Cathy; Martens, Andy; Pyszczynski, Tom, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 90(1), Jan 2006, 129-146. [6] Sympathy for the Devil: Evidence that Reminding Whites of their Mortality Promotes More Favorable Reactions to White Racists, Jeff Greenberg, Jeff Schimel, AndyMartens, Sheldon Solomon and Tom Pyszcnyski, Motivation and Eotion, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2001 [7] Russell J. Webstera; Donald A. Sauciera, "The Effects of Death Reminders on Sex Differences in Prejudice Toward Gay Men and Lesbians", Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 58, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 402-426 [8] Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, Veeder, Kirkland and Lyon 1990; Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon and Chatel 1992; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski and Lyon 1989 [9] European Journal of Social Psychology Volume 25, Issue 4, pages 417-433, July/August 1995 [10] Joel D. Lieberman, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Holly A. McGregor, "Advertising Opportunities with Wiley Online Library -- A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation", Aggressive Behavior, Volume 25, Issue 5, pages 331-348, 1999 [11] McGregor, Holly A.; Lieberman, Joel D.; Greenberg, Jeff; Solomon, Sheldon; Arndt, Jamie; Simon, Linda; Pyszczynski, "Terror management and aggression: Evidence that mortality salience motivates aggression against worldview-threatening others," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 74(3), Mar 1998, 590-605. [12] Jaynes, Julian, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976), ISBN 0-395-20729-0 [13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh [14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_and_the_Dragon