Psychological Inquiry An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory ISSN: 1047-840X (Print) 1532-7965 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hpli20 Motivation, Threat, and Defense: Perspective From Experimental Social Psychology Xiaowen Xu & Ian McGregor To cite this article: Xiaowen Xu & Ian McGregor (2018) Motivation, Threat, and Defense: Perspective From Experimental Social Psychology, Psychological Inquiry, 29:1, 32-37, DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2018.1435640 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2018.1435640 Published online: 21 Mar 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 19 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hpli20 PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2018, VOL. 29, NO. 1, 32–37 https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2018.1435640 COMMENTARIES Motivation, Threat, and Defense: Perspective From Experimental Social Psychology Xiaowen Xua and Ian McGregorb aDepartment of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; bDepartment of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Threat and Defense in Social Psychology goals. This insight is consistent with the most recently proposed motivational process theories revolving around discrepancy Target article authors March, Gaertner, and Olson (this issue) and conflict, that parsimoniously integrate the threat and define threat as pertaining specifically to stimuli that can cause defense literature in social psychology (Jonas et al., 2014; “immediate bodily harm” (p. 3). In social psychology, however, Proulx, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012). Before describing the the application of the term “threat” is much broader and refers contemporary manifestation of Lewin’s insight, and how it to the presence of any stimulus or predicament that might casts doubt on the dual implicit process model (DIPM), we undermine either physical (i.e., bodily harm) or psychological review how research in experimental social psychology was well-being (i.e., self-esteem loss, relationship rejection or ostra- similarly drawn, from the 1980s through the 2000s, to the idea cism, loss of control, cognitive dissonance, etc.; see Jonas et al., that there might be different threat-processing systems for sur- 2014, for a recent review). In the decades of social psychological vival-based versus merely negative stimuli. research on threat, the main criterion to determine whether a After the flurry of attention to how conflict was related to stimulus was threatening has been its capacity to elicit seem- threat, beginning with work by Lewin and Festinger through to ingly irrational defensive responses. That is, if a stimulus results the 1970s, research on threat and defense in the 1980s to 2000s in an irrational response that appears to provide some form of began to gravitate back to ideas reminiscent of the old ego- defense against a deficit or vulnerability highlighted by the defense and compensation view, that threats are particularly stimulus, then the stimulus is considered to be an experiential threatening when they undermine some form of critical, general threat. intrapsychic resource. Along these lines, the notion of “fluid This guiding assumption echoes psychodynamic notions of compensation” often came up in these general resource theories, ego-defensiveness in response to anxiety-provoking experiences as increasing evidence suggested that the defenses for various (Freud, 1967;Horney,1945). Support for the experiential, nonra- threats need not be in the same domain as the threat itself tional nature of threat and defense processing has come from evi- (Allport, 1943; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Horney, 1950; dence showing that participants generally are unaware that their Randles, Inzlicht, Proulx, Tullett, & Heine, 2015; Steele, 1988). A defensive responses are due to the anxiety-provoking stimulus multitude of theories proposed different forms of general and that their defensive responses diminish if given the chance to resources as the critical psychological resource to account for misattribute the source of their anxiety (Kay, Moscovitch, & the apparent, interchangeable diversity of threats and compen- Laurin, 2010; Proulx & Heine, 2008; Zanna & Cooper, 1974). satory defenses, for example, symbolic immortality (Greenberg, This defensiveness criterion toward threat was most fully Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997), self-esteem (Tesser, 2000), integrated into social psychology with Festinger’s(1957) cogni- meaning (Heine et al., 2006; Peterson, 1999), control (Kay, tive dissonance reduction findings, showing that people become Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008), certainty (McGregor, more extreme and self-serving in their opinions after experi- Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001; Van den Bos, 2009), and so mentally engineered cognitive conflicts. This work was an on. The premises of these models were highly similar, intuitive, extension of the work by Festinger’s advisor, Kurt Lewin and reminiscent of the old ego-defense ideas. The main area of (1935), whose work showed that goal conflicts cause defensively disagreement was identifying the precise motivational resource extreme reactions, for example, authoritarianism, aggression, that people were motivated to defend so reflexively. Was it self- and flight to fantasy. Lewin’s(1935) main insight was that goal esteem, meaning, control, certainty, or was it a more directly conflicts (or what he referred to as conflicting fields of force) survival-related concern that motivated defenses? result in anxious arousal (what he referred to as tension) that can lead people to go to defensive extremes for relief. Lewin took relatively vague psychodynamic ideas about ego defense Terror Management Theory and translated them into motivation and goal-related language and operationalizations that were testable in the lab. From his One of the most prominent theories in the threat and defense perspective, all threats were motivational threats that essentially literature—terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg et al., involved one (or more) salient goal(s) being blocked by other 1997)—argued for a position similar to that being made by the CONTACT Xiaowen Xu [email protected] Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G3, Canada. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC COMMENTARIES 33 target authors about implicit 1 (i1). TMT states that threats outcomes as mortality salience, and that these outcomes were related to mortality and death are especially fundamental and mediated by the extent to which the participants felt uncertain consequential, as we are evolutionarily motivated by their rele- (McGregor et al., 2001). Van den Bos and colleagues (2005), vance to survival. More than 35 years of research in TMT have similarly, found that writing about personal uncertainties of found that priming mortality salience (via writing manipula- high personal importance caused defensive moral affirmation tion, subliminal stimulus presentation, incidental exposure, and hostility responses similar to those aroused by mortality etc.) elicited greater defensive responses than reminders of salience. Perhaps critically, in both the personal uncertainty other negative, aversive experiences (e.g., physical injury or and mortality salience conditions, the defensive responses were pain, worries about upcoming exams). Mortality salience can mediated by experienced aversive uncertainty (Van den Bos lead to a variety of defensive responses, including increased et al., 2005).1 aggression, higher punishment for moral transgressions, greater Similarly, research on experimentally induced perceptual biases toward in-group worldviews, and increased self- conflicts and discrepancies also suggests that mortality con- enhancement on worldview relevant dimensions (see Burke, cerns may not be particularly special in terms of threat process- Martens, & Faucher, 2010, for a review). A second line of rele- ing. Even simple absurdities, uncanny stimuli, and nonsense vant TMT research showed that when people’s worldviews are word-pairings can cause similar defensive reactions as to mor- threatened, thoughts related to death became uniquely salient, tality salience, presumably because such discrepancies create an compared to other negative and unpleasant thoughts (see unexpected juxtaposition of a previously familiar and predict- Hayes, Schimel, Arndt, & Faucher, 2010, for review). Thus, able environment, which may then hinder goal pursuit (Proulx based on these findings, TMT researchers argue that there is a & Heine, 2008, 2009; Proulx, Heine, & Vohs, 2010; Randles, module specifically emphasizing survival that has a particularly Proulx, & Heine, 2011). For example, repeated exposure to powerful (implicit) effect on attention, judgment, motivation, semantic conflicts (e.g., a series of nonsense word pairings like and behavior. quickly and blueberry being presented together) caused the As such, TMT could accordingly be seen as a mature same amount of moral outrage as mortality salience and was research program on the cognitive, conative, and behavioral mediated by the same kind of distress that mediates mortality consequences of i1 processing. Early research on TMT did not salience effects (Randles et al., 2011). involve neural and physiological measures. Arguments for an i1 system were thus primarily based on (defensive) cognitive, conative, and behavioral