Nearly everyone fears death. How that fear influences human thinking and behavior is the focus of terror management theory (TMT) research. According to TMT, death anxiety drives people to adopt worldviews that protect their self-esteem, worthiness, and sustainability and allow them to believe that they play an important role in a meaningful world. Some of these views lead to troubling actions.
According to TMT, people need to insulate themselves from their deep fear of living an insignificant life destined to be erased by death. One path to address this fear is to assure themselves that they are part of an important group. This desire to reinforce cultural significance in the face of death often results in displays of prejudice based on the belief that the group with which one identifies is superior to others. In this way, people confirm their self-importance, at least to themselves.
TMT proposes that individuals are motivated to develop close relationships within their own cultural group in order to convince themselves that they will somehow live on—if only symbolically—after their inevitable death. While some of the foundational studies on which TMT is based have failed to replicate, thereby drawing criticism within the field of psychology, the framework continues to resonate for many.