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lationship between human nature and society. At one ture explains not only major trends in the history of political theory but also the structure, and chemical analysis was largely limited to descriptive Aristotle begins the Politics from the "observation" that which a man is forbidden to do that, which is destructive of his.
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The goal is just to get those thoughts out of consciousness.


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When thoughts of death are activated outside of consciousness, it's not that people become more existential in their thinking since they're not thinking about death at all. Rather, they bolster the psychological resources that they have learned to use to cope with the existential problem of death, their worldview and sense of significance. And so when death is close to mind -- after watching an action flick, hearing about a celebrity death, reading about an act of terrorism online, noting a weird spot or new wrinkle, driving past a cemetery -- people become more adamant in their beliefs and get extra-motivated to distance themselves from their physicality and to assert their symbolic value -- their intellect, achievements, and so forth.

They increase prejudice and aggression against others who are different. They reject the physical aspects of sex, avoid bodily activities, and use euphemisms for them. They show off their skills, smarts, fitness, and generosity. And indeed research has shown all of these things.

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Where is the line between a simple reminder of death and consciously thinking about death? Does one lead to the other or not necessarily? The conscious -- proactive or evasive -- defenses are only likely to be activated by consciously thinking about your own death. But most reminders of death that we are exposed to at least fleetingly enter consciousness, and that's more than enough to activate our unconscious defenses. We can't be absolutely certain conscious thought of death will always lead to unconscious defense, but the existing evidence suggests that the answer is likely yes. Even if a reminder of death isn't consciously noticed, any way people are led to think of death is likely, sooner or later, to trigger unconscious efforts to bolster one's worldview or self-worth.

We have shown, for example, that simply subliminally flashing the word "death" on a computer screen to Americans for 28 milliseconds is enough to amplify negative reactions to an author who criticizes the U. Is there any other way to be terrorized besides by death such that the theory still holds? Neither the theory nor the research implies that mortality is the only factor that worries people or motivates their behavior.

However, our evidence shows that the ways people keep their concerns about mortality at bay play a role in a wide range of aspects of human behavior that seem on the surface to have nothing to do with death. For example, we've found that the fear of death plays a significant role in many phobias -- not just fears of things that can kill you like germs, spiders, and heights, but also social phobias because they raise concerns about being embarrassed or ridiculed, and so, with self-esteem.

In one study, we found that reminders of mortality increase social reticence in socially anxious people. And another study found that when participants expected to have to present an ill-prepared speech to an audience, thoughts of death became more likely to enter consciousness. Many questions remain. How do the conscious ways we think about and react to death affect our unconscious reactions to it? Can extensive conscious contemplation of death or other forms of heightened death awareness make people less reliant on cultural belief systems and a sense of personal significance to manage their fears?

Can knowledge of our shared mortality be used to reduce rather than intensify intergroup conflict? How does our need for terror management affect how we humans treat other animals? Can knowledge of TMT facilitate growth and compassion and help people become more in touch with and in control of the choices they make in their lives? Sometimes I think they're exciting to consider and important to try to answer. Other times, they bring death thoughts closer to my consciousness.

I quickly defend my enduring significance by noting that science involves a continuous process of discovery and assessment and the best theories continue to generate interesting new questions and issues decades or even centuries later, thus ensuring my symbolic immortality until the field of psychology is completely obliterated along with the rest of the human species, whether by environmental depletion or poisoning, nuclear holocaust, or perhaps like Tyrannosaurus rex , by comet.

Come to think of it, only then will there be no more questions. There is a tendency for researchers to focus in on the nanoparticles that make up the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the bark on the trees rather than on the bark or the trees, no less the forest. I think some researchers focus in so narrowly on a specific finding from one specific study that they don't really think deeply about the theory or the larger context of hundreds of other studies and data from anthropology, archeology, history, and other fields that are all pertinent to what the theory was developed to explain.

A lot of people in our field -- and I am sure other sciences as well -- jump into research prematurely and are more concerned with quickly making names for themselves than they are with good scholarship and advancing knowledge. I think there's a theory that could explain this. Yes, we now know of at least one. On that note, what was the initial reaction to the research and what has been its long-term impact on the field and to you personally?

Immediately after its publication, the work had some impact in the press, but seemed to engender mainly puzzlement or disdain within academic psychology. Most psychological scientists at the time were trained to view people and science narrowly, and to be suspicious of big theories, a vestige of the anti-Freudian stance that began to take hold in academic psychologists in the s.

In contrast, we were proposing a big theory of human motivation based on a combination of existential philosophy and, of all things, psychoanalytic theorizing, along with influences from anthropology and sociology. On top of that, most people in our field were living largely in denial of death.


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    6. For years at conferences, people looked at us, generally from a safe distance, as "the death guys. Over time, I like to think TMT has helped open the field up to theorizing about and empirically investigating the roles of the unconscious, motivation, culture, religion, and existential concerns in human behavior. But I am more focused on the impact I hope it has on people in their daily lives and on professionals who may find it useful to promote physical and mental health, and social progress. Personally, I also hope that the understanding of human beings this research supports -- that we're all vulnerable creatures clinging to fragile beliefs to handle the existential predicament inherent in being human -- has helped me become a better, more compassionate person.

    It's helped me realize that, no matter how absurd someone else's beliefs seem to me, mine are likely no less absurd. And if such beliefs are helping that person function with equanimity and not leading him to harm others, I should respect them. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters theatlantic. Skip to content. Sign in My Account Subscribe. The Atlantic Crossword. The Print Edition.

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    Hans Villarica writes for and produces The Atlantic 's Health channel. Adding to the complexity, multiple interoceptive sub-systems operate concurrently, and may each afford different capacities and tendencies. There is some evidence for general, multimodal interoceptive capacity: heartbeat detection accuracy is correlated with gastric sensitivity Herbert et al. Furthermore, the relationship between interoceptive constructs across domains such as the heartbeat, blood glucose, respiration, temperature and other modalities is largely unknown.

    This gap in understanding may be due to the fact that most interoception studies gage accuracy within a single modality, and do not measure related constructs such as attention habits, regulation ability, or sensitivity to signal change, all of which converge to support interoceptive awareness Ceunen et al.

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    For example, knowledge that meditators have strong interoceptive attention tendencies might lead one to expect them also to possess superior accuracy in heartbeat detection, an idea contradicted by recent research on this topic Khalsa et al. The benefits of interoceptive attention in a particular domain such as breath or body monitoring therefore seem to be independent from a domain-general enhancement of interoceptive accuracy.

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    Instead, meditation practices appears to promote changes in a more specific subset of interoceptive capacities and tendencies, accompanied by non-interoceptive factors such as changes in intentions or goal-orientations unique to each system of practice Bornemann et al. Just as capacity may vary across interoceptive modalities, interoceptive constructs may also vary independently within a given modality.

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    For this reason, rather than arguing for the primacy of any of one interoceptive construct, the present discussion uses the term interoception to describe general processes of perceiving body states, while also acknowledging that a variety of contextual factors influence specific interoceptive capacities. A huge amount of research is needed to begin to catalog the relationships between specific capacities and modalities, let alone their plasticity and effects on well-being. If we could establish a working model of interoception that accounts for differences in how interoceptive signals are represented and managed, it is likely that some sub-systems would be more relevant for well-being than others.

    It is at this point that contemplative science and paradigms of cognitive processing may be extremely helpful, implicating particular interoceptive processes, addressing how interoception ideally functions, and how such function is shaped by experience. In particular, contemplative accounts have much to say on the distinction between maladaptive interoceptive conditioning that may lead to disorders, and adaptive learning that is purportedly engendered by contemplative practices.

    Here, we refer to contemplative practice in the broadest sense, i. A wealth of other body-oriented healing and psychotherapy methods may also fall into this classification, such as Dialectical—Behavioral Therapy Linehan et al. We discuss primarily practices derived from Asian contemplative traditions, as these have undergone the most research and been the focus for the largest effort to translate contemplative concepts into modern scientific terms.

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    This is not meant to exclude other contemplative traditions, and we hope future research will be extended into other such areas. Classical contemplative practices such as mindfulness and equanimity seem to speak to the issues of how interoceptive signals are integrated into a complex representation of self and the world beyond, and have models of how they affect health and well-being. There are, however, several outstanding challenges to realizing the potential benefits of these classical traditions in secular modern society.

    The first issue is the lack of equivalence between traditional contemplative and modern secular practices: although mindfulness has found a strong representation in secular clinical therapies and sciences, it is disputed whether this translation remains faithful to its classical sources Christopher et al.

    Second, while both clinical science and contemplative traditions share the goal of reducing human suffering, they differ in scope.

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    In modern secular contexts, practice goals are largely pragmatic, aimed at reducing affective symptoms and improving daily function. By contrast, classical traditions tend to orient toward more extensive change, seeking to generate insight into the fundamental nature of reality, with the intention of liberating individuals from their conditioned states Grossman and Van Dam, It is uncertain whether current appropriations of classical contemplative practices are sufficient to promote their historically lauded benefits.