「Defense」or「Self-cultivation」：Cross-cultural Perspectives on Psychological Coping Strategies to Death
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
廖立宇, Li-Yu Liao
Abstract
Terror management theory proposes that people often adopt defensive mechanisms, such as suppressing thoughts about death and protecting unique cultural worldviews unconsciously, to enhance self-esteem and overcome fear-of-death. Nonetheless, recent empirical studies and meta-analyses concluded that TMT cannot be verified and is not applicable in non-Western cultures, there are some limitations of TMT in predicting and explaining individuals’ fear-of-death in non-Western cultures. To solve this issue, this study put TMT in the Mandala Model of Self（an universal structure which describes human mind and action）and compared the cultural background of TMT with the Chinese traditions, then point out that there are such different ways facing to death in traditional Chinese society. For example, “thinking more about death in the consciously,” “making harmonious relationships between oneself and others, like family, mate, friends…” lead to the heightened cognitive accessibility of death and meaning of life in a Confucian society. 478 participants in Taiwan（represent the traditional Chinese Confucianism characteristics）were recruited for this study. The process of recalling near-death experiences was used to manipulate the participants’ feeling of mortality, then some following death-related situational judgment questions were asked in order to measure the participants’ concepts of coping strategies when faced the feeling of mortality. As predicted, results showed that the fear-of-death reducing process in Confucian society is different from that in Western cultures. People in a Confucian society usually think more about death in the conscious mind and dedicate their lives making harmonious relationships between themselves and others to reduce the fear-of-death. According to recent empirical studies and meta-analyses, TMT is no longer a universal theory as we once believed. As such, we need to take the issue of cultural tradition into consideration while conducting culture-inclusive fear-of-death studies. This study seeks to explain how cultural tradition impacts an individual’s concept of death and to generate new interests in culture-inclusive psychological theories on the topic of fear-of-death in the hope of finding better solutions.
Subjects
terror management theory
mortality
the mandala model of self
culture-inclusive theory
cultural tradition
Confucian society
SDGs
Type
thesis
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