Intimations of mortality

In Thai Buddhism, a high number of examples show that during the last 20 years or so the triangular interrelationship between hermeneutics, canonical authenticity and authority has been—more or less consciously—the subject of numerous, often very fervent debates. This has made clear the importance of the Pāli canon as a centre of reference for normative and formative authority in Thai society. Also, during these debates the conservatism of Thai Theravāda, and thereby its identity, has been challenged in various ways, e.g. by Western influenced text-critical or intertextual approaches, by reference to superior religious insight and by requests for feminist interpretations of the Pāli canon. At the same time, however, and in response to these challenges, the rationale for Thai Theravāda's conservatism and identity have become very clearly articulated, to an extent that has arguably never happened before in Thai history. By looking at some of the debates in which the foremost Thai Buddhist thinker and scholar monk P. A. Payutto (1939– ) has been involved, I seek to gain a deeper understanding of what these debates can teach us about the specific context and state of Thai Buddhist studies.     

Natality and mortality: rethinking death with Cavarero

In this article I rethink death and mortality on the basis of birth and natality, drawing on the work of the Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero. She understands birth to be the corporeal event whereby a unique person emerges from the mother’s body into the common world. On this basis Cavarero reconceives death as consisting in bodily dissolution and re-integration into cosmic life. This impersonal conception of death coheres badly with her view that birth is never exclusively material but always has ontological significance as the appearance of someone new and singular in the world of relations with others. This view of birth calls for a relational conception of death, which I develop in this article. On this conception, death is always collective, affecting all those with whom the one who dies has maintained relations: As such, our different deaths shade into one another. Moreover, because each person is unique in virtue of consisting of a unique web of relations with others, death always happens to persons as webs of relations. Death is relational in this way as a corporeal, and specifically biological, phenomenon, to which we are subject as bodily beings and as interdependent living organisms. I explore this with reference to Simone de Beauvoir’s memoir of her mother’s death from cancer. Finally I argue that, on this relational conception, death is something to be feared.     

Observation as a method to enhance collective efficacy: An integrative review

ObjectivesThis review provides an integrative argument for the use of observation as an intervention to manipulate individual collective efficacy beliefs in sports teams.DesignAn exploration of the conceptual and empirical evidence underpinning observation-based interventions for increasing collective efficacy.MethodA presentation of reflections on the following. First, we reflect on existing techniques used to increase self- and collective efficacy beliefs. Second, we consider collective efficacy in the context of observational learning and the various modeling techniques employed in the sports and motor performance literature. Third, we highlight relevant literature from neuroscience, outlining the analogous neural pathways evident for social cognition (i.e., collective efficacy) and observation.ResultsThis review presents a case for the use of observation interventions to manipulate collective efficacy, drawing upon social psychological frameworks of human behavior, the observation-based literature, and contemporary understanding of brain and behavior.ConclusionsObservation-based interventions are suited for collective efficacy manipulation in sport. There is a need to advance understanding of this relationship in order to maximize improvements in collective efficacy across group contexts.     

Personality predicts mortality risk: An integrative data analysis of 15 international longitudinal studies

This study examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of mortality risk, and smoking as a mediator of that association. Replication was built into the fabric of our design: we used a Coordinated Analysis with 15 international datasets, representing 44,094 participants. We found that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were consistent predictors of mortality across studies. Smoking had a small mediating effect for neuroticism. Country and baseline age explained variation in effects: studies with older baseline age showed a pattern of protective effects (HR < 1.00) for openness, and U.S. studies showed a pattern of protective effects for extraversion. This study demonstrated coordinated analysis as a powerful approach to enhance replicability and reproducibility, especially for aging-related longitudinal research.     

When death is not a problem: Regulating implicit negative affect under mortality salience

Terror management theory assumes that death arouses existential anxiety in humans which is suppressed in focal attention. Whereas most studies provide indirect evidence for negative affect under mortality salience by showing cultural worldview defenses and self‐esteem strivings, there is only little direct evidence for implicit negative affect under mortality salience. In the present study, we assume that this implicit affective reaction towards death depends on people's ability to self‐regulate negative affect as assessed by the personality dimension of action versus state orientation. Consistent with our expectations, action‐oriented participants judged artificial words to express less negative affect under mortality salience compared to control conditions whereas state‐oriented participants showed the reversed pattern.     

Children's understanding of death as the cessation of agency: a test using sleep versus death

An important problem faced by children is discriminating between entities capable of goal-directed action, i.e. intentional agents, and non-agents. In the case of discriminating between living and dead animals, including humans, this problem is particularly difficult, because of the large number of perceptual cues that living and dead animals share. However, there are potential costs of failing to discriminate between living and dead animals, including unnecessary vigilance and lost opportunities from failing to realize that an animal, such as an animal killed for food, is dead. This might have led to the evolution of mechanisms specifically for distinguishing between living and dead animals in terms of their ability to act. Here we test this hypothesis by examining patterns of inferences about sleeping and dead organisms by Shuar and German children between 3 and 5-years old. The results show that by age 4, causal cues to death block agency attributions to animals and people, whereas cues to sleep do not. The developmental trajectory of this pattern of inferences is identical across cultures, consistent with the hypothesis of a living/dead discrimination mechanism as a reliably developing part of core cognitive architecture.     

Amplification and simplification as modes of theoretical analysis in psychology

Some theoretical projects are autonomous, in the sense that they can successfully be pursued without attending to the results of empirical research. Amplification and simplification are the most important of these. An amplification is a logical discovery about a theory which forces us to alter its probability. An example would be a discovery that the postulates of a theory lead to an unexpected inconsistency. A simplification is the invention of a new theory which has the same empirical consequences as an existing theory, but which is more probable than its predecessor. An example would be an “Ockham's razor” argument to the effect that certain postulated theoretical entities can be eliminated without altering the theory's observational consequences. Several subvarieties of amplification and simplification are distinguished, and examples are provided from the literature of theoretical psychology.     

The nature of death and the death of nature: The impact of mortality salience on environmental concern

According to terror management theory, individuals are motivated to distinguish themselves from the rest of nature because doing so facilitates the denial of human mortality. However, based on an integration of terror management and contingencies of self-worth perspectives, the present research hypothesized that existential insecurities about death may differentially influence environmental concern depending on whether or not an individual derives self-esteem from environmental action. Results demonstrated that heightened mortality awareness led to less concern for the environment among those not deriving self-esteem from an environmental domain, but fostered environmental concern among those who do acquire self-esteem from environmental action. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Partial death as a defining characteristic of a subculture

This paper presents a discussion of the idea of "partial death" as it relates to the subculture of the beats or hypsters, especially in San Francisco, from about 1948 to 1964, with special emphasis on the works of Kerouac and Ginsberg and a study by Rigney and Smith.     

Heidegger on death as a deficient mode

Continental Philosophy Review - Heidegger conceives Dasein’s death as a peculiar type of negation, i.e., a negation that is not simple disappearance, and so is, in some sense, survived by...     

Individual difference variables in close relationships: a contextual model of marriage as an integrative framework

We examined and refined a contextual model of marriage (Bradbury & Fincham, 1987) in order to organize the associations between individual difference variables and satisfaction in close relationships. Seventy-eight spouses were administered instruments assessing marital satisfaction and individual differences in femininity, masculinity, dysfunctional relationship beliefs, and causal and responsibility attributions for marital difficulties. As predicted, higher levels of satisfaction were related to femininity and to partner's femininity, and lower levels of satisfaction were related to dysfunctional beliefs and less benign attributions. More important, two competing hypotheses relating to the contextual model were tested. A model in which the transitory, or proximal, context (e.g., responsibility attributions for specific relationship events) mediates the relation between the stable, or distal, context (e.g., general beliefs about relationships) and satisfaction was refuted. Support was obtained, however, for a model in which proximal and distal variables both account for unique variance in marital satisfaction. The usefulness of distinguishing between transitory and stable variables and the implications of the contextual model for organizing research on close relationships are discussed.     

Looking away from death: Defensive attention as a form of terror management

Previous research has suggested that the physical aspects of human nature in general, and physical human frailties in particular become disagreeable and repugnant following death primes. The current research tested this hypothesis in two studies using an eye-tracking methodology. Participants were subliminally primed with death or with a control word and then viewed a series of arrays containing four pictures each, during which their eye-movements were monitored. In Study 1, the arrays included pictures of physical injury or neutral objects, and in Study 2 pictures of physical injury, threatening images, and neutral objects. The results indicated that in both studies death primes significantly decreased gaze duration towards pictures of physical injury, and did not have a significant effect on gaze duration towards neutral images. However, in Study 2 death primes increased gaze duration towards threatening images. The discussion examines the role of motivated unconscious attention in terror management processes.     

Effectively using death in health messages: Social loss versus physical mortality salience

Research based on the terror management health model demonstrates that highlighting death as a consequence of risky behavior can lead to unintended responses to health communications. In two studies, we investigate whether a form of social loss message frame can motivate someone to change his or her behavior to prevent negative health consequences. In Study 1, we compare social loss and physical mortality print messages in the context of “texting while driving.” Overall, social loss as opposed to physical mortality messages facilitate greater intent to reduce risky health behaviors when death‐related cognitions have been removed from conscious awareness. In Study 2, we manipulate message framing and self‐affirmation in the context of “smoking.” We find that highlighting family members' inability to cope when one dies can result in health messages that facilitate the acknowledgment of the health risk and reduce risky health behaviors. This effect is enhanced when individuals affirm on the importance of “relationships with family and friends” prior to viewing health messages. The implications for the terror management health model are discussed noting that death can be effectively used in health communication when framed as relationship protection rather than one's physical mortality.