September 20 — The Psychology of Mortality and Terror
A renowned expert on terror management theory may argue that terrorism, charismatic politicians, and xenophobia is caused by creepy-looking androids.
When: Thursday, September 20, 12:00-1:00 PM
Where: IUPUI, University Library, Room 0130 755 West Michigan Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46202
Free and open to the public.
Indiana University’s School of Informatics kicks off its 2007 Informatics Colloquia with a lecture by Jamie Arndt, associate professor of psychology, University of Missouri, Columbia. the title of his speech: “Transience to Transcendence: The Psychological Impact of the Awareness of Mortality.”
In order to get this straight, Provocate offers the press release for the event.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker proposed that we humans deal with our natural fear of dying by developing a worldview that gives life stability, permanence, and meaning. Although religions offer a literal transcendence of death, even atheists may find comfort in ‘living on’ through their children or creative works. From our homeland to our favorite basketball team, we construct our identity from things that are bigger and more enduring that we are.
Psychologists first thought Becker’s idea was untestable; however, Prof. Arndt and several colleagues have devised clever ways of exploring it.
“More than three hundred experiments in more than a dozen countries have shown that terror management has a pervasive effect on people’s attitudes and behavior,” explains Prof. Arndt.
One such effect is that people tend to favor anyone who shores up their worldview, and disfavor anyone who violates it. As Arndt discovered from an experiment in which the word death was flashed so briefly between two neutral words as to go unnoticed, most terror management effects are strongest when they are subconscious. So, what kinds of things can set them off?
“Virtually anything that subliminally reminds us of death,” answers Karl MacDorman, associate professor, IU School of Informatics at IUPUI. “One cause is when a human-looking robot fails to live up to its claims on humanness—perhaps because of an odd gap around its eyes or a jerkiness in its movement. Masahiro Mori called this the uncanny valley.”
Prof. Arndt is visiting Indiana University to explore these issues at the invitation of Prof. MacDorman. In a related experiment by MacDorman, participants who had been exposed to a creepy-looking android showed a much stronger preference for a charismatic political candidate as compared to the control group. They also overwhelmingly voted against a foreign student who was critical of US foreign policy.
“It seems like an uncanny robot could be a novel, and in many ways threatening experience that would provoke thoughts of mortality, fear, and disgust,” says Prof. Arndt.
What Provocate has been arguing privately seems confirmed: the biggest threat we face is creepy looking androids.
Actually, this is an important and fascinating topic, well worth braving the parking situation at IUPUI … it was important even before 9/11, and is becoming more fascinating as experiments with and without creepy robots expands our base of understanding.
Know before you go … You might want to know about “terror managament theory,” tries to answer two relatively simple questions: Why do people need to feel good about themselves?; and Why do people have so much trouble getting along with those different from themselves? See how it applies to our lives today in “The Politics of Mortality.”
For more information … After the event, Prof. Arndt recommends going here for a lot more information about terrorism management theory. Ernst Becker’s The Denial of Death is an excellent book. You should read the book that has gone furthest connecting Becker to contemporary policy: Thomas A. Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg’s In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror. Read Mori’s “Valley of the Uncanny” and see why Provocate now is most worried about moving zombie androids with prosthetic hands (but is still confident that bunraku puppets will save us).
If this sounds interesting, check out … The other colloquia offered by the School of Informatics, especially (in all seriousness) Peter Kahn’s talk about “Social and Moral Relationships with Personified Robots” November 1, and the neural-behavioral approach to these questions by Suzanna Becker, “Modulatory and Memory Functions of the Hippocampus: Linking Memory, Stress, Mood and Neurogenesis” October 24.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
[…] Print This Post « September 20 — The Psychological of Mortality and Terror October 24 — Linking Memory, Stress, Mood and Neurogenesis […]
September 15th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
[…] September 20 — The Psychology of Mortality and Terror A renowned expert on terror management theory may argue that terrorism, charismatic politicians, and xenophobia is caused by creepy-looking androids. check it out […]