Aff K Toolbox Part 2 UM 7wk - Open Evidence Archive

Aff K Toolbox Part 2 F - N **FEAR KS**
Fear Inevitable Fear of death is inevitable. Humans CANNOT change the orientation of terror
towards threats. It's a natural product of evolution.
Pyszczynski et al '6 (Tom, Prof. Psych. - U. Colorado, Sheldon Solomon,
Prof. Psych. - Skidmore College, Jeff Greenberg, Prof. Psych. - U. Arizona,
and Molly Maxfield, U. Colorado, Psychological Inquiry, "On the Unique
Psychological Import of the Human Awareness of Mortality: Theme and
Variations" 17:4, Ebsco)
Kirkpatrick and Navarette's (this issue) first specific complaint with TMT
is that it is wedded to an outmoded assumption that human beings share with
many other species a survival instinct. They argue that natural selection
can only build instincts that respond to specific adaptive challenges in
specific situations, and thus could not have designed an instinct for
survival because staying alive is a broad and distal goal with no single
clearly defined adaptive response. Our use of the term survival instinct
was meant to highlight the general orientation toward continued life that
is expressed in many of an organism's bodily systems (e.g., heart, liver,
lungs, etc) and the diverse approach and avoidance tendencies that promote
its survival and reproduction, ultimately leading to genes being passed on
to fu- ture generations. Our use of this term also reflects the classic
psychoanalytic, biological, and anthropological influences on TMT of
theorists like Becker (1971, 1973, 1975), Freud (1976, 1991), Rank (1945,
1961, 1989), Zilborg (1943), Spengler (1999), and Darwin (1993). We concur
that natural selection, at least initially, is unlikely to design a unitary
survival instinct, but rather, a series of specific adaptations that have
tended over evolutionary time to promote the survival of an organism's
genes. However, whether one construes these adaptations as a series of
discrete mechanisms or a general overarching tendency that encompasses many
specific systems, we think it hard to argue with the claim that natural
selection usually orients organisms to approach things that facilitate
continued existence and to avoid things that would likely cut life short.
This is not to say that natural selection doesn't also select for
characteristics that facilitate gene survival in other ways, or that all
species or even all humans, will always choose life over other valued goals
in all circumstances. Our claim is simply that a general orientation toward
continued life exists because staying alive is essential for reproduction
in most species, as well as for child rearing and support in mammalian
species and many others. Viewing an animal as a loose collection of
independent modules that produce responses to specific adaptively-relevant
stimuli may be useful for some purposes, but it overlooks the point that
adaptation involves a variety of inter-related mechanisms working together
to insure that genes responsible for these mechanisms are more numerously
represented in future generations (see, e.g., Tattersall, 1998). For
example, although the left ventricle of the human heart likely evolved to
solve a specific adaptive problem, this mechanism would be useless unless
well-integrated with other aspects of the circulatory system. We believe it
useful to think in terms of the overarching function of the heart and
pulmonary-circulatory system, even if specific parts of that system evolved
to solve specific adaptive problems within that system. In addition to
specific solutions to specific adaptive problems, over time, natural
selection favors integrated systemic functioning(Dawkins, 1976; Mithen,
1997). It is the improved survival rates and reproductive success of
lifeformspossessing integrated systemic characteristics that determine
whether those characteristics become widespread in a population. Thus, we
think it is appropriate and useful to characterize a glucose-approaching
amoeba and a bear-avoiding salmon as oriented toward self-preservation and
reproduction, even if neither species possesses one single genetically
encoded mechanism designed to generally foster life or insure reproduction,
or cognitive representations of survival and reproduction. This is the same
position that Dawkins (1976) took in his classic book, The selfish gene:
The obvious first priorities of a survival machine, and of the brain that
takes the decisions for it, are individual survival and reproduction. ...
Animals therefore go to elaborate lengths to find and catch food; to avoid
being caught and eaten themselves; to avoid disease and accident; to
protect themselves from unfavourable climatic conditions; to find members
of the opposite sex and persuade them to mate; and to confer on their
children advantages similar to those they enjoy themselves. (pp. 62-63) All
that is really essential to TMT is the proposition that humans fear death.
Somewhat ironically, in the early days of the theory,we felt compelled to
explain this fear by positing a very basic desire for life, because many
critics adamantly insisted, for reasons that were never clear to us, that
most people do not fear death. Our explanation for the fear of death is
that knowledge of the inevitability of death is frightening because people
know they are alive and because they want to continue living. Do Navarrete
and Fessler (2005) really believe that humans do not fear death? Although
people sometimes claim that they are not afraid of death, and on rare
occasions volunteer for suicide missions and approach their death, this
requires extensive psychological work, typically a great deal of anxiety,
and preparation and immersion in a belief system that makes this possible
(see TMT for an explanation of how belief systems do this). Where this
desire for life comes from is an interesting question, but not essential to
the logic of the theory. Even if Kirkpatrick and Navarrete (this issue)
were correct in their claims that a unitary self-preservation instinct was
not, in and of itself, selected for, it is indisputable that many discrete
and integrated mechanisms that keep organisms alive were selected for. A
desire to stay alive, and a fear of anything that threatens to end one's
life, are likely emergent properties of these many discrete mechanisms that
result from the evolution of sophisticated cognitive abilities for
symbolic, future- oriented, and self-reflective thought. As Batson and
Stocks (2004) have noted, it is because we are so intelligent, and hence so
aware of our limbic reactions to threats of death and of our many systems
oriented toward keeping us alive that we have a general fear of death. Here
are three quotes that illustrate this point. First, for psychologists,
Zilboorg (1943), an important early source of TMT: "Such constant
expenditure of psychological energy on the business of preserving life
would be impossible if the fear of death were not as constant" (p. 467).
For literature buffs, acclaimed novelist Faulkner (1990) put it this way:
If aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or
an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long
period of bewil- derment and dread it has been taught to regard as an
irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it. (pp. 141-142) And
perhaps most directly, for daytime TV fans, from The Young and the Restless
(2006), after a rocky plane flight: Phyllis: I learned something up in that
plane Nick: What? Phyllis: I really don't want to die. An important
consequence of the emergence of this general fear of death is that humans
are susceptible to anxiety due to events or stimuli that are not
immediately present and novel threats to survival that did not exist for
our ancestors, such as AIDS, guns, or nuclear weapons. Regardless of how
this fear originates, it is abundantly clear that humans do fear death.
Anyone who has ever faced a man with a gun, a doctor saying that the lump
on one's neck is suspicious and requires further diagnostic tests, or a
drunken driver swerving into one's lane can attest to that. If humans only
feared evolved specific death-related threats like spiders and heights,
then a lump on an x-ray, a gun, a crossbow, or any number of weapons
pointed at one's chest would not cause panic; but obviously these things
do. Of what use would the sophisticated cortical structures be if they
didn't have the ability to instigate fear reactions in response to such
threats?
Fear Good- Meta Analysis Repeated meta-analyses prove fear appeals motivate adaptive behavior.
Witte and Allen '00 (Kim, Prof. Comm. - MSU, and Mike, Prof. Comm. - U.
Wisconsin Milwaukee, Health Education & Behavior, "A Meta-Analysis of Fear
Appeals: Implications for Effective Public Health Campaigns", 27:5,
October, Sage Journals)
At least three meta-analyses have been conducted on the fear appeal
literature. Boster and Mongeau8 and Mongeau9 examined the influence of a
fear appeal on perceived fear (the manipulation check; i.e., did the strong
vs. weak fear appeals differ significantly in their influence on measures
of reported fear), attitudes, and behaviors. They found that on average,
fear appeal manipulations produced moderate associations between reported
fear and strength of fear appeal (r = .36 in Boster and Mongeau and r = .34
in Mongeau) and modest but reliable relationships between the strength of a
fear appeal and attitude change (r = .21 in Boster and Mongeau and r = .20
in Mongeau) and the strength of a fear appeal and behavior change (r = .10
in Boster and Mongeau and r = .17 in Mongeau). Sutton7 used a different
meta-analytic statistical method (z scores) and reported significant
positive effects for strength of fear appeal on intentions and behaviors.
None of the meta-analyses found support for a curvilinear association
between fear appeal strength and message acceptance. O