Chapter 16 - Physical Health Under the Shadow of Mortality: The Terror Management Health Model

Abstract

This chapter presents the terror management health model as an integrative effort to connect terror management processes and health decision-making. The model proposes that health scenarios themselves can act as reminders of mortality, which subsequently ignite terror management processes. Conceptualizing awareness of death as the catalyst for motivational orientations, the model then offers specific hypotheses about how conscious thoughts of death, in health contexts, result in attempts to reduce perceptions of vulnerability and remove these thoughts from focal awareness. Nonconscious thoughts of death, in contrast, trigger responses that affect health decision-making based more on the relevance to one’s sense of self-worth and cultural identity. Research derived from the model is reviewed. Additional discussion centers on the reciprocal contributions toward understanding basic and applied issues at the intersection between terror management and health with a look toward issues for future research.