Mother's milk: an existential perspective on negative reactions to breast-feeding |
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Authors: | Cox Cathy R Goldenberg Jamie L Arndt Jamie Pyszczynski Tom |
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Institution: | Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, MO 65211, USA. crcr25@mizzou.edu |
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Abstract: | Drawing from an existential perspective rooted in terror management theory, four studies examined the hypothesis that breast-feeding women serve as reminders of the physical, animal nature of humanity and that such recognition is threatening in the face of one's unalterable mortality. Study 1 demonstrated that mortality salience (MS) led to more negative reactions toward a scenario depicting a woman breast-feeding her infant in public, and in Study 2, MS decreased liking and increased physical avoidance of a potential task partner described as breast-feeding in another room. Further supporting the hypothesis that such reactions are rooted in threats associated with human creatureliness, MS in conjunction with a breast-feeding prime led to an increase in the accessibility of creaturely related cognitions (Study 3) and priming human/animal similarities (i.e., creatureliness) led to increased negativity toward a magazine cover depicting a woman breast-feeding her child (Study 4). Implications of this research are discussed. |
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