SecurityCurve Weblog

Terror Management Theory

Ever hear of Terror Management Theory (TMT)? TMT is a theory in psychology that basically tries to explain the psychological reaction of people to fear of their own death. For example, TMT predicts (and experiments support) that persons reminded of their own death will tend to cling to concepts, leaders, and symbols of "traditional" sociological values; for example, persons reminded of the threat of death by terrorists are more likely to hold to political and social conservativism than if they are not reminded of their own mortality. Al Franken lays out a convincing argument (personal politics aside) for why repetitions of terrorism strikes helped sway the 2004 presidential elections in his book "The Truth (with Jokes)".

TMT also says something else; it says (intuitively) that individuals faced with the threat of their own demise will cling to ideas that make death seem less likely or less meaningful. For example, individuals have shown under experimental conditions to represent themselves as having a stronger belief in religion immediately after being reminded of their own mortality. Makes sense, right? But I don't think it's just death; in fact, I think that the same principle probably operates (albeit at a lower level) for individuals who are threatened with events that may not be life-threatening. For example, I think if threatened with the prospect of emotional anguish that most folks would react in a similar way; for example, if considering the loss of a loved one. But that's just me; no experiments that I know of have explicitly proved this.

So, as always, we have to tie this back to computer security. Which makes me ask the question of why FUD works as a sales tool. Could it be that the same principles are at work here? Is it the case that individuals, when presented with the prospect of the worst case scenario, become more pliant and succeptible to certain marketing spin that they would otherwise be hardened to. Most folks take their jobs very seriously; is it out of line to speculate that perhaps they would be more likely to cling to "computational conservativism" marketing messages just like TMT predicts with the loss of life? Clearly, I would argue that they are more likely to make decisions that they perceive would make the presented threat seem likely. But how far does that go? I don't have any answers here, but boy would I like to see some experiments done in this area...