Anxiety Buffer Research Articles

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Involves Disrupted Anxiety-Buffer Mechanisms

We present anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) and report a study conducted with Polish female victims of domestic abuse that provides empirical support for the theory. ABDT builds on terror management theory, and posits that posttraumatic stress disorder (PtSD) involves a disruption in anxiety buffering mechanisms which normally protect people against anxiety. when traumatic events lead to a breakdown of this system, people become vulnerable to recurrent bouts of anxiety, which leads to the various PtSD symptoms. we tested the abDt hypothesis that trauma-exposed individuals with high levels of PTSD symptomsand risk factors for PTSD, such as high peritraumatic dissociation or low coping selfefficacy, do not respond to mortality reminders the way psychologically healthier people do.whereas people typically respond to mortality reminders with increased worldview defense, indicating an intact anxiety buffering mechanism, we found that individuals with PTSD andassociated risk factors do not display such responses.

The role of mechanisms of buffering anxiety in HIV carriers. A study within the terror management theory paradigm

The paper concerns definition of the level of posttraumatic growth (PTG), the psychological adaptation mechanism occurring after extreme experiences in life, such as being informed of having HIV infection. The study is experimental, aiming to assess whether correlations between exposure to thoughts of stressful experiences and their psychological consequences are mediated by an efficient mechanism of buffering anxiety Fifty-four men and 26 women infected with HIV who underwent manipulated exposure to mortality according to the hypotheses of the terror management theory (TMT) were included. Subjects were randomly assigned to the control group (dental anxiety) or the experimental group (fear of dying). The results confirmed the assumptions of the terror management theory. The subjects had an efficient mechanism of alleviating the fear of dying, the so-called "anxiety buffer." The analysis revealed a high level of posttraumatic growth and advantages derived from the disease. The paper additionally characterizes the specific group of HIV-positive people, their functioning in society and the family. It touches on such issues as professional work, relations with relatives and friends, social life, and adherence. The study has shown that the specific group of people infected with HIV managed very well to adapt to the circumstances. One may say that as a consequence of acquiring the infection, the subjects have experienced significant changes of personality, which have ultimately led to an improvement of their lives and offered new possibilities for personal and social development to them. All the recorded changes fit into the TMT paradigm.

Identity Salience and its dynamics in Palestinians Adolescents

The goal is to build and test a measure for identity salience and use it to explore the validity of some assumptions of the identity trauma theory (ITT). ITT suggests that the salience of identity concerns, personal, and collective enhances or negatively affect agency and self-efficacy and explain suicidality and militancy. Using samples of 880 Palestinian adolescents, we developed in the first study a measure for identity salience that included sub-scales for identity commitment and militancy. In the second study we used the measure along with measures for fear of death, mental health variables, and trauma types. Personal identity traumas were associated with decrease in fear of death; increase in mental health problems and in clinical suicide. Collective identity traumas were associated with increase in identity commitment and militancy. Militancy was found to be associated with decreased PTSD which suggests that militancy acts as anxiety buffer. Identity commitment was associated with decrease in militancy. The implications of the results were discussed.

Anxiety buffer disruption theory: a terror management account of posttraumatic stress disorder

We present anxiety buffer disruption theory (ABDT) and provide a review of current evidence regarding the theory. ABDT is an application of terror management theory to explain diverse reactions to traumatic events and the onset and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It posits that PTSD results from a disruption in one's anxiety-buffering mechanisms, which normally provide protection against anxiety in general and death anxiety in particular. The disruption of these mechanisms leaves the individual defenseless in the face of overwhelming anxiety, which leads to the major symptom clusters of PTSD: re-experiencing, hyper-arousal, and avoidance. According to ABDT, because of the disruption in their anxiety-buffering mechanisms, individuals with PTSD symptoms do not respond to mortality reminders in the defensive ways that psychologically healthier individuals do. We review four sets of studies conducted in four different cultures and with people who have experienced different types of trauma, which reveal this atypical response pattern and lend support to ABDT.

Self-Consciousness and Death Cognitions from a Terror Management Perspective

Two studies explored the connection between self-consciousness and death cognitions. In Study 1 (n = 56), a positive association was found between accessibility of death-related thoughts and the ruminative dimension of self-consciousness. In Study 2 (n = 212), a mortality salience induction led to higher validation of cultural worldviews (a more severe perception of social transgressions) than a control group, but only among individuals with lower self-consciousness, whereas participants characterized by higher self-consciousness did not make increased use of this cultural anxiety buffer. Rather, their naturally heightened death awareness led them to react to social transgressors in a neutral condition in the way usually found only after a mortality salience induction. Gender could not alternatively account for these findings. The results are explained in terms of terror management theory. It is suggested that a high level of self-consciousness may serve as an internal death reminder, leading to greater cultural worldview validation on a regular basis.

The Defensive Nature of Benefit Finding During Ongoing Terrorism: An Examination of a National Sample of Israeli Jews

A study examining the effects of terrorism on a national sample of 1,136 Jewish adults was conducted in Israel via telephone surveys, during the Second Intifada. The relationship between reports of positive changes occurring subsequent to terrorism exposure (i.e., Benefit finding), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity, and negative outgroup attitudes toward Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) was examined. Benefit finding was related to greater PTSD symptom severity. Further, Benefit finding was related to greater threat perception of PCI and ethnic exclusionism of PCI. Findings were consistent with hypotheses derived from theories of outgroup bias and support the anxiety buffering role of social affiliation posited by terror management theory. This study suggests that benefit finding may be a defensive coping strategy when expressed under the conditions of ongoing terrorism and external threat.

Existential function of babies: Babies as a buffer of death‐related anxiety

The present study examined babies as death anxiety buffers with Chinese participants in three experiments. In Experiment 1, death‐related thoughts increased college‐aged participants' interest in human babies. In Experiment 2, images of newborn animals reduced the number of death‐related thoughts recorded by college‐aged participants. In Experiment 3, female factory workers who read news articles describing deaths of babies had pessimistic estimations of their own life expectancies. An explanation of these results is provided within a terror management theory framework, with a primary focus on how babies reinforce cultural worldviews and enhance self‐esteem via the notion of symbolic immortality. Thus, the anxiety‐buffering function of baby is subsumed under cultural worldviews validation and self‐esteem enhancement.

Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management: Differences by Interdependent and Independent Self-construal

Two studies tested the hypothesis that religious fundamentalism and self-construal are associated with systematic differences in death awareness. We hypothesized that, for individuals low in religious fundamentalism, who presumably experience less of an anxiety buffer based on worldview, interdependent self-construal (a sense of the self as encompassing connections to close others) should be associated with reduced baseline death awareness — because relational processes may have anxiety buffering functions. Results from both studies supported this notion, showing that chronic and primed interdependence were associated with reduced death-awareness for low fundamentalists. Among persons scoring high on religious fundamentalism levels of death awareness were unrelated to self-construal. These studies suggest that fundamentalism and self-conceptions interact to influence the terror-management process.

Scared to death or scared to love? Terror management theory and close relationships seeking

To cope with paralyzing terror awakened by thoughts of their own death people usually use two defense mechanisms: cultural worldview and self-esteem. Recent studies suggest that also close relationships may function as a death anxiety buffer. The present research explores this phenomenon in an experimental paradigm. One hundred sixteen undergraduates completed a self-esteem scale, attachment scale, and a scale tapping ideal mate characteristics. After experimental manipulation each participant talked shortly with six unknown students of the opposite sex and rated their attractiveness. The results showed no effect of self-esteem either in the experimental or control condition. As for the attachment styles, we obtained significant interaction of avoidance and condition (non-avoidant participants were more favorable under mortality salience), and simple effect of anxiety (anxious participants increased the assessments regardless of the condition). Both effects were short-term and affected only the assessments of the first date. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Terror management in Japan

Do terror management effects generalize to non‐Western cultures? This question is significant because terror management theory offers an explanation of the origin of self‐esteem, whereas other research finds divergent self‐esteem motivations across cultures. The effects of mortality salience (MS) on the dual‐component anxiety buffer were investigated in Japan. A control group and a MS group were given an opportunity: (i) to defend their cultural worldview by derogating an anti‐Japan essay writer; and (ii) to boost their value within their cultures by indicating a greater desire for high‐status over low‐status products. Replicating past research with Western samples, Japanese in a MS condition were more critical of the anti‐Japan essay writer and they indicated a marginal tendency to prefer high‐ over low‐status products, compared with a control group. The theoretical implications are discussed.

The anxiety buffering function of close relationships: mortality salience effects on the readiness to compromise mate selection standards

AbstractThis research examines the utility of a terror management approach to understanding the motivations and emotional consequences of compromise in mate selection. One hundred and sixty‐eight undergraduates completed a self‐esteem scale and a scale tapping ideal mate characteristics, and were then assigned either to a mortality salience, physical pain salience, or neutral condition. Half of the participants rated their readiness to compromise ideal mate standards and the remaining half completed a neutral scale. Then, participants completed a scale tapping their emotional state. Mortality salience led participants to significantly compromise their mate requirements. This effect seemed to be most pronounced among high self‐esteem participants who also experienced the greatest amount of guilt when compromising under mortality salient conditions. Low self‐esteem participants who compromised under mortality salient conditions reacted with higher levels of shame. The results are discussed in terms of the anxiety buffering functions of close relationships. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Globalization, Culture, and Anxiety: Perspectives and Predictions from Terror Management Theory

This paper considers the psychological and social consequences of an ascendant global capitalism and its resultant cultural impositions from the perspective of current social psychology theory. Terror Management Theory (TMT) suggests that culture serves as a psychological defense against the terror inherent in human existence. TMT proposes that cultures serve the vital psychological function of making anxiety-buffering self-esteem available to humans by providing world-views and standards of value to achieve within that description of reality. Persons whose faith in that world-view is strong and who see themselves as living up to its standards of value achieve the anxiety-buffering effects of self-esteem needed in an existentially terrifying world. Because a hegemonic global capitalism and its cultural impositions guarantee that in a cultural meaning system that affords anxiety-buffe ring self-esteem to only the “winners” of the great competition, most people will perceive themselves as “losers.” TMT predicts increased anxiety and social distress because a global capitalist system and culture will offer psychological sustenance to a minority of the world’s people. This paper will review the theory, its empirical supports, and offer a set of hypotheses derived from the predictable psychological, social, and behavioral consequences of a global capitalist system and culture.

On Making Terror Management Theory Less Motivational and More Social

Terror management theory (TMT) is a very impressive achievement. It is rooted in plausible biological and psychological assumptions and serves a range of integrative functions, both vertically in terms of resurrecting Freud, Rank and Maslow, and horizontally in terms of integrating self-esteem, just-world, cognitive dissonance, social identity and impression management theory and research. Further, at level of parsimony and integration it really cannot be faulted; as a descriptive framework it buys a great deal with a relatively small number of assumptions. For example, it is able to keep essence of cognitive dissonance-the importance of consistency motive as well as finding a place for self-esteem and self-presentational motives by relating all of them to the more basic goal of maintaining integrity of cultural anxiety buffer. The experimental research establishing specificity of salience of mortality concerns relative to other aversive experiences or failures is also impressive. Given all of these positive features of integrative power, parsimony specificity of mortality salience effects, and unique predictions, what are limitations of terror management model? At a metatheoretical level, perhaps basic issue is need for a need-type formulation. At heart, all need-type models involve a type of tension-reduction dynamic. In this case we seek to avoid facing our mortality. In effect we have a psychological version of second law of thermodynamics-the entropy principle. Everything eventually comes down to avoiding terror that recognizing death would bring. I find this somewhat ironic, because terrorists all over world seem to seek death readily to destroy evil nonbelievers. Indeed, continued existence of outgroup seems a much greater threat than their own death as they strap explosives to their bodies for a higher religious cause. Similarly, mass media describes events everyday in which people risk their lives daily for petty reasons, in which guns are pulled at slightest provocations. Indeed, I see a world where for many people preserving life-their own or other peoples'-has no meaning. The present theory would seem obliged to account for such behaviors. Let me leave pop sociology, however, and point to scholarly critiques regarding motive-type explanations, Perhaps most famous is that of British philosopher Peters (1958), who systematically reinterprets Freudian type-motivational assumptions from a rule-based model. For example, there is nothing motivational about assuming that primary and secondary processes involve different rules of information processing. In this context, we invoke motivational concepts when rule following breaks down. Moreover, although one would not know it from Pyszczynski, Greenberg, and Solomon's description of social identity theory, current model as elaborated by Turner (1987) is a nonmotivational formulation fueled by metacontrast and assumptions about role of shared social categories. Within context of this model, for example, social influence is interpreted in terms of attempts to maximize ingroup similarity, with members attempting to resemble prototypic ingroup position. Moreover, Turner derived from this model a condition where social identity increases even when one's ingroup fails; thus at issue is no simple self-enhancement through ingroup success. At level of specific claims, I am somewhat uncomfortable with authors' interpretation of Swann's self-verification effects as support for dissonance theory. For example, as elaborated by Brehm and Cohen (1962), dissonance is more than consistency seeking. It involves adding parameters of choice and commitment to any attitude-discrepant position, which is not true of Swann paradigm. Indeed, in Swann's view an information-processing-overload avoidance explanation is favored over a motivational interpretation. At a more basic level, I have following kinds of concerns. The concept of a cultural worldview anxiety buffer strikes me as rather vague conceptually-is this a schema of values, beliefs, attitudes? Can it be measured, manipulated, primed? Can this assumption be

Temporal patterns of stress appraisals for high- and low-anxious individuals

Abstract According to the cognitive-relational theory of stress, emotions, and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, 1987), cognitive appraisals are seen as mediating processes that refer to the stakes a person has in a stressful encounter and to the coping options. They result in either challenge, threat, or harm/loss. It is undetermined, however, how these appraisals are interrelated over time and whether they can occur simultaneously. An idealized motivation model has been established to stimulate research on this issue. The present experiment has been set up to assess the dynamic pattern of cognitive appraisals at nine points in time under stress, defined as continuous failure at demanding academic tasks. Trait anxiety is considered to represent a personal vulnerability component among other antecedents of appraisals. Therefore, anxiety was used as a between-groups factor. Very different patterns of appraisals emerged for low- and high-anxious subjects, indicating that low trait anxiety buffers the experie...